Episode 311: Leadsology: Creating Lifelong Clients and the Power of Karma with Tom Poland

Tom Poland: There are no completely unselfish acts. So when you care about a human being, there’s a thing called karma, or even what you sow or whatever, you know, philosophy or religion you’re into. But there’s this thing where you get it back. That’s always the hint of Gdanka for me is how would I like to be treated if I was this person? I like money coming in, but I don’t want to trample on, you know, the ethics and the integrity while I’m doing it. And sure, we all make mistakes. I put my hand up for that one as well. But, but just practice caring about people. And if they get it, they get it. If they don’t, they don’t. If they reciprocate, great. If they don’t, they don’t. But just do the right thing by people. I think that’s the. And in fact, Marcus Aurelius said something about that. You know, it doesn’t matter how stressed you are, it doesn’t matter how much time you have, it doesn’t matter m how much money do. Just do the right thing.

Bob Woods: 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. This episode of the making Sales social podcast is brought to you by social sales link, the company that helps you start more trust based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource [email protected], library. Welcome to the show.

Brynne Tillman: Welcome back to making sales social. I have a wonderful guest today, Tom Poland, who is, my new friend, but also we’ve been networking through JVMM, which is a joint venture group, and I’m just really excited to share his expertise. Today. Tom is a multiple bestseller selling marketing author and has clients in 151 cities around the world. He works, just two days a week in seclusion from his private resort on the subtropical sunshine coast of Australia. And we are blessed to have you for 15 or 20 minutes of your two days a week. Hi, Tom. Welcome to the show.

Tom Poland: G’day, Bren. you know, Australians tend to tell it like it is, unlike our, friends in, California, God bless them. And I’m prefacing what I’m going to say with that because I want people to know that, you know, I’m fair dinkum about it, as we say, here down in Australia. But I love meeting with you because, first of all, because of your accent and, no, I don’t have one. You have one. the way you say you have an accent. No, no, no, the way you say coffee in New Jersey and, the fact that you’re whip smart and that you love your business and you’ve got these two different models going, there’s nothing not to love about you. Please marry me in the next lifetime. Okay.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah, my husband might object to that, but.

Tom Poland: Yeah, yeah, my wife too.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah.

Tom Poland: But, but next time around, you know.

Brynne Tillman: You never know what life brings you, right?

Tom Poland: So long as you. So long as you like coffee, it’s a deal.

Brynne Tillman: Okay, I do, and I like coffee.

Tom Poland: There you go. All right, let’s rock and roll.

Brynne Tillman: I’m thrilled to talk to you today about your brilliant marketing brain.

But before I do, I ask all my guests, what does making sales social mean to you?

Tom Poland: Well, as an introvert, it means not leaving home. But jokes aside, to me, it’s about integrity. You show up to meetings, hopefully on time. you do what you said you were going to do for your marketing partners. you care about your marketing partners, to meet with them after you’ve done something together to see if it was okay for them. So it’s about, to me, it’s about being a decent human being. It’s about caring. we had an email from a guy, this is a classic, two weeks ago, he, couldn’t download something. We’ve got thousands of emails going out, so you get a few of those. And so my team probably spent three, or four emails back and forward sorting it out for him, and he was blown away. He said this is amazing. It’s just a free download, you know, why are you guys doing it? And so there’s the DNA of caring about people. I think that that’s what it means to me.

Brynne Tillman: So I love that. And right in your, LinkedIn headline, it’s, you really are, like, ask me about your weekly, predictable weekly flow of new clients. No call, no charge, just happy to help. And that really does, that’s indicative of who you are as a human being. Like, I just feel like you are attached to the results and the solution and just know that the money’s going to come.

Tom Poland: Yeah, it’s a practice, you know, it’s not a light switch, but I’ve been practicing that attitude. Still not perfect at it. But

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Tom Poland: paramohansa Yogananda said something to the effect that there are no completely unselfish acts. So when you care about a human being, there’s a thing called karma or even what you sow or whatever, you know, philosophy or religion you’re into. But there’s this thing where you get it back. So that’s always the hint of Gdanka for me is how would I like to be treated if I was this person? so I’m not Mother Teresa, you know, I like money coming in, but I don’t want to trample on, you know, the ethics and the integrity while I’m doing it. And sure, we all make mistakes. I put my hand up for that one as well. But just practice caring about people, and if they get it, they get it. If they don’t, they don’t. If they reciprocate, great. If they don’t, they don’t. But just do the right thing by people. I think that’s the. And in fact, Marcus Aurelius said something about that. You know, it doesn’t matter how stressed you are, it, doesn’t matter how much time you have, it doesn’t matter how much money, do, just do the right thing. And most of us know what that thing is.

Brynne Tillman: I love that. I love that.

So your big thing is leadsology, right? And this is your lead generation methodology that really creates, in your clients leads for life. Right. You talk about that, share a little bit about that philosophy. Why this really works more than all the other gender.

Tom Poland: Well, I think, first of all, a principle and then a context, and then, well, unpack, it a bit. So the principle is that leadsology is about making an offer, putting an offer in front of people that were pretty confident, already looking for that offer. So if you think about outbound selling and sales and direct marketing, et cetera, it’s about putting an offer in front of a lot of people. And very often we don’t know if they’re, the, I call it hungry for our honey. Bears like to eat honey. Is this bear that’s hungry or is it beer satiated? So we want to identify people who are already looking for your offer. We’re quite confident they are. That’s the first principle. So there’s no arm twisting. It’s a very organic, relaxed process. and if they buy, it’s fine. If they don’t, that’s fine, too. But we’re putting offers in front of people that we think are inbound, if you like. That’s the principle is we want to put an offer in front of people that we think are already looking for that offer. the context is professional services, intellectual property courses, speaking, consulting, coaching is not a physical product. Because marketing a physical product, you can do very effectively with traditional advertising. Once you get that right, you get the copywriting right, you get the media right. You get, put it in front of the right market, that’s fine. But that doesn’t work with professional services. so people like you and I who have online courses, who do coaching, consulting and so on, we need to give people, you know, the pink teaspoon at the ice cream parlor.

Brynne Tillman: Yes, the sample.

Tom Poland: Right, exactly. And we call that content marketing. And that also ties in with the principle that, when we put a free offer out there for some, for the greater watch mouse is we don’t know who’s who sort of thing, who’s hungry, who’s not. it draws the people towards our pink teaspoon. And we know that person’s interested in. And now mixing my metaphors and mixing my food as well, that person’s interested. Now, honey or ice cream?

Brynne Tillman: Honey on ice cream. Oh, good. Yeah.

Tom Poland: Oh, good. Okay.

Brynne Tillman: so I love that.

So it all starts with the content. and I think that’s important. A lot of folks that are in a business development role think content is, let me tell them all about the things I can do for them, and then they’re going to want to buy from me. But you have a different philosophy around that, right? Talk a little bit about the content that does people.

Tom Poland: Yeah. So we’ve got to understand. So the thing in marketing, people call it a unique sales proposition or an elevator pitch or even to a slogan or just call it a marketing message, I suppose. And that’s really where it starts, because we’ve got to work with reality as it is, not as we would like it to be. As we would like it to be, we just tell people what we’ve got and they beat down the door wanting to buy from us. as it is, people have a brain, and there’s this thing called, a reticular activating system in the brain. This is a literal physical part of the brain, and its job is to filter out irrelevancy and to filter in relevancy. And when someone hears, let’s say we’ve got someone who does leadership training or something, when someone hears about excellence in leadership or leadership, the edge or developing leadership skills, the reticular activating system is going blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’ve heard it so many times before and we decided it wasn’t particularly relevant. So in a nanosecond, I mean, literally a fraction of a second, when someone reads that or sees that message, it just gets blocked out. It’s like camouflage. It’s like the reticular activity says, camouflage over that, and we just move on. So to get through the RAS retract event system, whatever message you’re leading with, which is your free download message or your free webinar message or your free workshop message

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Tom Poland: or whatever it happens to be, and this is true of every step of the sales process, particularly the early steps. It’s got to get through that reticular activation. It has to be different. It has to be different. It has to be a different angle to whatever I said before. Rolls, Royce classic advertisement National Geographic double stage spread when you used to have things called paper magazines and, For Rolls. For Rolls Royce. And it was inside the cabin of a Rolls Royce, looking out on the freeway, a clear freeway and with a mahogany dashboard. And the words were said. The loudest thing you’ll hear in a Rolls Royce silver whatever it was is the ticking of the clock from the mahogany dashboard as you cruise along the freeway at 100 miles an hour. Now, they didn’t say the best quality. They didn’t use the word luxury. All of those things went boom in your brain when you saw that and you read those words. So we know a picture speaks a thousand words, but a dozen words can create that picture. So that’s a good example of something that gets cut through. It’s still giving the message that the manufacturer wanted to give in this case, but it gets cut through it. Now, the second thing that has to happen, a person’s brain, is that message gets through the filtering system and hits the amygdala, and that’s got a result. This is the fight or flight center. We know we told the reptilian brain had that whatever, but it’s a real thing. Where it came from, God or evolution, who knows? I don’t. But it hits the amygdala and the reaction is either fight or flight or find a. Find out more. This is relevant. I’m interested. Click the link or download the book or sign up. So when you get the marketing message, getting cut through because it’s differentiated, and by the way, containing specifics is an easy way to get differentiation. And hits the amygdala, then people with their mouse these days go click. I’m interested in that. And they download or they register or whatever they do. But all of this is preliminary to them. Even knowing whether you’ve got a program or whether you’re in person or whether you’ve got a diagnostic or they don’t even know what it is you do. You’ve just got them their attention because you’ve been smart enough to get through the ras, hit the amygdala, and they go, oh, and Bryn, you’ll see this. When you have Zoom meetings with people and you say something and it gets through the ras and hits the amygdala. They do two things. You can observe this as a student of marketing, it’s worth doing this. First of all, their eyes open. So their eyes literally widen. And the second thing they do is they lean forward slightly. And that’s when you. You don’t see this when you’re sending emails out, of course, but you can practice this. And if you. And if you use a phrase in a group meeting and you see people go like this, write it down, because that’s gold. And that’s where all marketing starts, is with that, message.

Brynne Tillman: That’s amazing. I have a note taker that happens to be in this meeting, but it goes into all my meetings. And when I go back to it, it will tell when people smiled, when people nodded. You can actually fast forward to see all those things. So it’s really kind of cool. so I love all of that. And I think that the new phrase instead of fight or flight is find or flight. I think that’s your new phrase. So I love that.

Tom Poland: We will rewrite the university courses on human psychology. Okay.

Brynne Tillman: I love that. I think we can.

Tom Poland: I’m just feeling it’s incomplete without us.

Brynne Tillman: You know, I think we can add a lot of, pizzazz to the course curriculum. That’s what I would say. So I just want to talk for a moment.

You have a ten part leadsology interactive model. And I know that’s a lot of parts, and I know that people can download that. But talk to me a little bit about the interactive model and what that means and why that really works with your clients.

Tom Poland: Right? So there’s. When you look at how you get that message in front of people and in front of the eyeballs and next to their ears, you know, you can. You can write a book and put that in front of them. You can run a, two-day workshop and put that off in front of them. There’s a lot of different ways, mediums through which you can get the message about your magic out to the market on a spectrum. The one-page cheat sheet download requires very little skin in the game from the prospect. But yes, it gets the message in front of them, but very little skin in the game. The other end of the spectrum. Running a two-day workshop where people have to fly somewhere and let’s assume it’s free, there’s not a financial barrier, requires a lot of skill in the game. And that’s why the number of people you’ll convert from that two-day workshop is infinitely more percentage-wise than the number of people you convert, from a one-page cheat sheet. Not just percentage-wise, but number-wise as well. But it’s a lot more work and you’re going to have less people going to a two-day workshop, and you will download a one page

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Tom Poland: cheat sheet. So you’ve got to get hit the sweet spot. You want people to have enough skin in the game to register that they’re seriously interested, but not so much it prevents them from taking that next step. So something like a diagnostic tool or a quiz or a survey is close to that sweet spot. a short webinar is probably the absolute perfect balance between enough skill and, again, not too much. So the interactive model, when people complete that, we know that they care about a solution to their problem because it’s going to take them probably five, seven minutes to complete it. And the skin in the game I’m talking about is their time. So that’s why something like an interactive model might be for some target markets, especially if you’re dealing with technical target markets, such as cpas, lawyers, scientists, et cetera. so different mediums are going to suit different markets, but that’s one of the ones I like. And also it gives you opportunity automatically to give someone, a semi-customized report of the diagnosis of the situation and showing them where the gaps, in my case, where the gaps are in their marketing model.

Brynne Tillman: Oh, I love that. I mean, that really, I think, allows you to fill in the blanks instead of starting from scratch every time, too.

Tom Poland: Yeah, yeah, it’s a bit of a diagnosis, but, I do like the short webinar, though, because it gives us, we’d all rather be entertained than educated. Right?

Brynne Tillman: Or a little bit of both.

Tom Poland: It’s more fun. Well, if you can do both. And that’s why, we’re playing around with this twelve-minute webinar right now, which is on demand. We’re finding two-thirds of people are watching on-demand and one-third is scheduling a time. but that’s a good comment. It seems to be, and I still got two more months of testing to do, but it seems to be about enough time that people who are getting that opportunity two-thirds of the moment go, well, hell, I’ve got twelve minutes right now is getting my emails. Let’s see what it’s about. and it’s quite a little hyper I’m presenting. So it’s a little hyper, not hyperbole, but, you know, high energy.

Brynne Tillman: The way that you do it is so interesting too, because you show up and you pick, like this is going to be running at these times. Pick. And the next time, and it could be ten minutes or 15 minutes, but you can now stop for the next time it’s running. And I think there’s something psychological about that than completely on demand.

Tom Poland: Right, right. Oh, that’s interesting observation. I hadn’t thought about that. But that maybe there’s that specificity we’re talking about before that. Yeah, yeah. There’s still a start time. Yeah, I think you’ve got something there because if it’s at any time, anytime I get a little bit of apathetic about that, I come back to that anytime. But if it’s in seven minutes. Yeah. Maybe there’s that factor there where I’ve got to. I’ve got to show up on time. That’s always a good, It’s indicative of a quality client that they can show up. Right.

Brynne Tillman: I love that. Yeah. I think it’s interesting. We have eleven-minute classes for $11. We’ve been playing with that a little bit.

Tom Poland: You and I are living in a parallel universe, I think.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah, we have. Yeah. But 1111 is my thing, so I’m more on. Yeah, that’s just.

Tom Poland: How about that?

Brynne Tillman: Lots of stories around 1111. But, you know, as we’re talking about brevity, we’re coming to kind of wrapping this up today.

But two things we have in common that I haven’t mentioned. One is we both love tennis.

Tom Poland: Oh, true, true. I didn’t know that of you. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman: And we’re both grandparents.

Tom Poland: Huh? Get out of here. You’re not 23 years old. You started when you’re twelve or what?

Brynne Tillman: Oh, my daughter just turned 34 this weekend, so, yeah, I’ve got two.

Tom Poland: Holy ghoulie.

Brynne Tillman: Wow. I have. About those things in common. I just thought.

Tom Poland: How old are your grandkids?

Brynne Tillman: three. Almost three and a half and almost two.

Tom Poland: Delightful, delightful. Isn’t it great when they come visit? And isn’t it great when they go home again?

Brynne Tillman: I have them all weekend this weekend while her mom goes to London. So.

Tom Poland: Fantastic. yeah.

Brynne Tillman: So. Well, her best friend is over in England and she had a baby, so we’ll take the babies anyway. All fun things popping over to London.

Tom Poland: For the weekend, sweetie.

Brynne Tillman: Isn’t that nice? It’s only 5 hours from New York.

Tom Poland: Try doing that from Sydney.

Brynne Tillman: M I know she loves Australia. She was there for a couple of weeks before babies and it was one of her favorites.

Tom Poland: My favorite phrase of the week is going to be, I asked folks, I asked Bryn about Toronto. What’s Toronto like? She said, it’s just like Australia, except freezing cold. Just think of it like Australia if kept us freezing cold. I love that. All right, wrap it up.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah. As we wrap this up, is there any question I did not ask you that I should have?

Tom Poland: probably. How does long take my hair to get my hair so perfect every morning?

Brynne Tillman: Well, it’s just

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Brynne Tillman: perfect. I wish. I wish it were that easy for me.

Tom Poland: Yeah, for bald people like me, it doesn’t take long at all. But thank you for the question.

Brynne Tillman: Yeah. I have to shave more than you do, I think. What are you going to do?

Tom Poland: All right.

Brynne Tillman: All right. As we wrap this up, I thank you so much for all your great insights. how can people get in touch with you? Where can they download the ten?

Tom Poland: Yes, yes, yes, yes. That thing. That thing we just talked about, the call to action. Gettomsfreebook. Um.com.

Brynne Tillman: Oh, perfect.

Tom Poland: Gettomsfreebook.com. and they can go and get my original bestseller, leadsology, the science living demand that goes through those ten parts you were talking about earlier.

Brynne Tillman: Awesome. I love that. Thank you, my friend. Great, great. mic drop moments. And I really appreciate it. And I know that all our listeners do, too.

And speaking of our listeners, when you guys are out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.

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