You may not think of yourself a performer, but prospecting and performing have some important things in common. In both cases, it’s important to get yourself noticed and stand out from the crowd. Today’s guest is an expert in the art of getting yourself noticed.
Tsufit is a former lawyer who left the legal profession in order to become a performer. She has performed as a singer and a comedian, in the theater and on television. Now she is an author, speaker, and PR and marketing coach. Listen to the episode to hear what Tsufit has to say about getting noticed, attracting people, and the importance of a good story.
Episode Highlights:
- Tsufit’s legal background and how it informed her work as a performer
- Where to start with getting noticed
- How communicating one-on-one differs from communicating with a room full of people
- The importance of being able to tell a story that interests people
- How to catch people’s interest during the first 30 seconds of speaking to them
- Why you should start in the middle of a story, rather than the beginning
- How Tsufit’s methods can work for enterprise sales
- The power of an authentic voice
- How you can create dramatic moments by doing the unexpected
- Why tone matters, especially when speaking over the phone
- Tsufit’s free tip series
- How a well-crafted email can make a big difference
Resources:
Spotlight Secrets: Free Tip Series
Step into the Spotlight: LinkedIn Group
Transcript:
Marylou: Hi everyone, it’s Marylou Tyler. I actually met Tsufit, who is a guest on today’s show, a long time ago, it’s like four or five years ago. I saw her speak at an event and I was mesmerized. I wanted to get right into this conversation with her.
Tsufit is featured pretty much everywhere, she’s in Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine. She’s the author of this wonderful book called Step Into The Spotlight, A Guide To Getting Noticed. A former lawyer, and Canadian. She has just a wonderful viewpoint on getting yourself noticed.
I asked her on the show today, without further ado, welcome, Tsufit, to the show.
Tsufit: My pleasure, I’m glad to be here.
Marylou: This is just an amazing opportunity, it really resonated with me when I listened to your 12 Speaking Mistakes. One of them just really, totally got me and that was the mistake number three, which is the 30 seconds in the spotlight, not knowing what to say.
Tsufit: Yeah.
Marylou: Even though I’m a process expert and I worked at top of funnel, we’re trying to get conversations boiled up to the top so people can start these conversations. But almost overwhelmingly, the questions I get from people are, “What do I say when I get somebody on the phone? How do I present myself? What’s the first thing I should say to them?” When I heard you talk about that, I think you said you created over a hundred different openers. I call them openers, and you call them mini shows.
Tsufit: Here they tend to call them networking infomercials or I think of them really like a mini show.
Marylou: Yeah. When I heard that, I thought, “Oh my goodness, I’ve got to get you on this show so you could talk to us about how do we get ourselves noticed when it’s such a busy world. We spend all this time and money trying to get people to start to engage with us, and then we bungle it in those first 30 second on the phone.
Tsufit: Yeah, it’s true. I don’t remember if you read my intro or not just to tell them my background but I was a lawyer for many years, a litigation lawyer. In that world, there was a certain way of speaking. You have to be “professional.” After about 10 years of being a litigation lawyer, I left the limelight to be a singer, actress, and stand up comedian.
Marylou: Wow.
Tsufit: I realized that I had learned some stuff that people in business just don’t know. People in business think it’s about being great at what you do. Being great at what you do gets you to ground zero, it’s important, it’s essential. I’m not saying you shouldn’t be great at what you do, but if you do think that’s gonna get you clients, not so much because there’s gazillion other people who are great at what you do and maybe they’re even greater than you at it, but you know what? Being the best at what you do is not really what gets you clients.
Marylou: That’s true.
Tsufit: Being able to attract people is what gets you at least to the top of your funnel, at least to the stage where you can discuss what it is you have and what it is they want. On discovering this, I started coaching people on what to say and it ended up, you talked about 30 seconds. I actually teach a four week course on what to say in 30 seconds. Can you imagine, I could have made it a 10 week course because there’s just so much.
Where you start, it depends who you’re talking to obviously, but you have to start with color, you have to start with flavor, you have to start with story, you have to start with why are you doing this? Why are you doing what you’re doing? By that, I don’t mean stand up at a networking meeting and say, “I’m a life coach because I’m really passionate about helping women break through the barriers.”
You can go to any 7:00AM networking meeting, those rubber egg, board of tray events and hear 95 life coaches say that. Then you’ll hear 17 business coaches, help you break through the barriers, make a transformation, get massive income. Then you’ll hear the financial experts tell you—it’s all the same. It’s all the same. We filter it out and we don’t hear it.
A realtor will stand up and say, “Now is a really good time to buy yourself a house because mortgage rates are low.” We don’t even hear that. They think they’re being so impressive when they’re not. How do you cut through that? You have to tell a story. You have to figure out who you are and what is interesting about you.
That’s why I was saying about my background before I wanted to answer this question because once people know that I was a litigation lawyer, I had four kids in four years, I left that to perform, I have a music studio, I’ve done stand up comedy on national TV, I wrote a book. Once they know some of that stuff, it’s much more interesting to them to hear what I have to say. But I still wouldn’t stand up and say, “Hi, I’m Tsufit, I’m a marketing coach, I’m a speaking coach, I’m a publicity coah.” All of those things are true but that wouldn’t get me any clients or any customers. I would have to stand up there.
Yes, it’s true. When I used to go actively to networking—now I do more online—when I used to physically go, I actually have a little recipe box. It took 4×6 index cards. Just scribble a little what I call infomercials on them and they’re all different depending on what I was trying to create that day. One of the things I would tell your listeners if you’re going to a networking event or if you’re going to a meeting with the prospector, whatever it is. It’s different if you’re talking to a whole room or if you’re taking one on one.
The program that I teach, 30 Seconds in The Spotlight, is not so much focused of the one on one if some of your sales listeners might be interested in, because one on one really has to be so interactive and so much focused on the other person. Whereas when you’re standing in front of a room full of people, like if you go the local Chamber of Commerce or the local BNI or whatever it is, it’s really more of a mini show like I said.
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: It depends what you’re doing. But if it’s like a mini show, then you have to really figure out what one result do you want that day? Maybe maximum to like backup damsel version of that. But you don’t want to go there and say, “Hi, I’m a graphic designer. I can help you make your website or your brochure or your business cards or do layout for your book or I can help you in social media or whatever.” Because first of all, the audience doesn’t know what to do with that, number one. Number two, they’re filtering you out because it’s so boring they’re not even hearing you in the first place. How are you gonna penetrate if they can’t hear you?
What you do is you go there and you tell a story. The story might be based on your childhood, it might be based like I told you, litigation lawyer leaves law for limelight. I’ve had actually a newspaper article with that headline, Litigation lawyer leaves law for limelight, because it’s interesting to people.
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: I’ll give you an example of you like, I have four daughters. I’m very blessed, they were born in four years, talk about empowering women. They were born into my business because I was a lawyer when they were born but I quickly became an entrepreneur. I would involve them in the business.
One day, my fourth daughter came and said to me, “Mommy, I just won a public speaking contest at my school.” I had heard this four times in four years from four different daughters. Within 30 seconds, I wrote an infomercial, I don’t remember if I was teaching a class of just going to a networking event. It took me about a minute to write the infomercial and half of that was getting her permission to do it.
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: Because I didn’t want to invade her privacy. Basically, the infomercial was something like, “Four years ago my youngest daughter Viza won at a public speaking contest in her school. Three years ago, my oldest daughter, Daniela, won the public speaking contest in their school. Two years ago, my second daughter Paloma won the public speaking contest in her school. Today, my third daughter, Riviera, the shy one, won the public speaking contest in her school. I’m Tsufit, I’m a public speaking coach. Not trying to take my daughters’ triumphs as my own, but I think the fact speaks for themselves. Tufit, for when you’re ready to get noticed.”
They’re something like that. I don’t remember exactly what it was. It just took me seconds to write it. It was based on facts, it was based on truths but it’s a lot more interesting than showing up and saying, “Hi, I’m a public speaking coach.”
Marylou: Most definitely.
Tsufit: I’ve never really called myself a public speaking coach and I never called myself a marketing coach and I’ve never called myself a business coach or a publicity coach or any of those things. I just get up there and talk about getting noticed and people figure it out for themselves.
Marylou: It’s funny because we do have a little bit of the wide audience effect. Granted, we’re using the emails that we send out to potential prospects to cast a wider net out there to a multiple number of people with the goal of getting them to bubble up to the top for a conversation. We also need to focus on that one on one conversation.
I remember a story a friend told me one time, he was sitting in his manager’s office and his manager was listening to voicemails. For every one of the voicemails that came in, where they said, “Hi, my name is Marylou Tyler and I’m from XYZ Company.” He hit the delete key on the voicemail. He wouldn’t even go past. There was only one he listened to apparently and it was starting with the story, it was starting with getting an end result. It had what you were talking about; it was strong, it had color, it had flavor and I’m not sure about the drama part but it definitely started differently. It got their attention.
Tsufit: That’s a good point. Actually, I’ve been critiquing people. In fact, I get brought into conferences and teleconferences just to critique people 30 seconds. In fact, that’s part of what I do in my business. One of the first critiques I give them is don’t start with, “Hi, I’m so and so…” because at the beginning, nobody cares.
Number one, nobody cares. Number two, nobody hears you because they haven’t decided yet whether you’re worth their attention. We live in an age where every time we turn around, whether it’s in the grocery store or on the floor, they trying to send us a message, whether you’re in a washroom in a restaurant, there’s a message on the back of the door, in the subway. Everywhere, there are messages. You go to see YouTube videos but first you got to sit through their little commercial.
Everybody’s trying to sell to us all the time. We’ve got this defence system where we don’t even hear it. If you start, “Hi, I’m Marylou Tyler,” or, “Hi, I’m Tsufit.” It’s like, “So what? I don’t know you and even if I do, who cares?”
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: But if you start with the story like, “17 years ago, I was sitting in the back of a taxi cab and Sister Mary Katherine was banging on the window.” If you stop me there, don’t you want to know what’s gonna happen next? Even if you’re thinking, “I don’t know who Sister Mary Katherine is and I don’t even know who you are.” But our minds, we’re curious, it’s an incomplete puzzle, you can’t just leave me hanging, okay I’m gonna listen long enough to find out why is Sister Mary Katherine banging on your taxi window.
The other thing I would tell your listeners is start in the middle. Don’t start at the beginning. “Hi, I’m so and so,” is starting at the beginning. You’re starting chronologically. Or even if you start a story, don’t start in the beginning. Start in the middle of the story. I didn’t even tell you why I’m in the back of the taxi cab or who Sister Mary Katherine is and why is she bangging on the door, I didn’t tell you.
Marylou: No.
Tsufit: It forces you to listen even if you’re not interested. You’re going to listen at least long enough to get that question resolved in your mind. Then if you want, you can turn the channel on me, but you’re not gonna do it before that.
Marylou: Exactly, I remember listening to you one time when you were talking about being up on stage. I think you had books, maybe it was your book that you were at the back of the room kind of thing. Instead of saying something to the effect of, “Hey, buy my book.” Or, “My books are at the back of the room.” You gave them two price points.
Tsufit: Yeah.
Marylou: You said, “$20 if I like you, and $30 if I don’t.”
Tsufit: It’s funny because here’s what happened, that was just something that came about once by chance. Usually I tell people, “Don’t be overly spontaneous.” Everybody thinks you should be spontaneous, you should sound spontaneous, but you should know what you’re going to say when you get there. Unless you’re really, really, really, experienced at this. Nobody would ever tell a ballerina to get on stage and just wing it. She rehearses. The more you rehearse what you’re gonna say or what you’re gonna do or dance or whatever, the more free you are to then improvise a little bit because you know basically what you’re gonna do.
I basically, usually, when I would go to a networking meeting, I would know what I’m gonna do. Or while I’m driving over there, I’d be saying, “Okay Tsufit, what do I want to do today?” It’s 6:45 in the winter in Canada and I’m sharpened to a 7:00AM meeting and I’m saying, “Okay, why am I going? What am I doing? What do I want the result to be?” Because if I don’t know what’s the result I want is, then how am I gonna lead them there?
Maybe the result is I want them to buy my book, maybe the result is I want them to sign up to spotlightsecrets.com for my free tips, maybe the result is I want them to hear me in a seminar, whatever it is. I first decide that.
Let’s say that day, my goal was the book. Maybe I’d say something about the book, but I’d never pitch it, I’d never come and say, “Come see me if you wanted it.” I’d never say anything about it.
But one day, spontaneously, I said something about the book and instead of saying, “Come see me,” Or, “I’ll be at the back room.” I said, “You know, I have a handful with me. $20 if I like you, $30 if I don’t.” It was just something I said spontaneously once.
The price of the book in the US is $19.95 and in Canada, I think it’s $21.95 plus taxes, something like $23.05. There’s no legitimate way for anybody to pay $30 for this book anyway.
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: But I sort of said it as a joke. The result was people would line up at the end of the meeting with their wallet open pulling out money, sometimes $20, sometimes $30, and look at me sheepishly and say, “Tsufit, do you like me?”
Marylou: Do you like me?
Tsufit: What did I achieve in that? It doesn’t become a question of do I want to buy the book or do I not want to buy the book. It becomes the question of, is she gonna sell it to for $20 or is she gonna sell it to me for $30? I took away the question about whether they want it or not and made it a question about how much it is going to cost them.
It’s just like Billy doesn’t want to go to bed, you don’t fight with him about going to bed. You say, “Do you want to wear the blue pajamas or the red pajamas?” We’ve all heard that.
Marylou: Right. Right.
Tsufit: We gave him a choice. It worked. Actually, I once had the mayor of the local city come up to me and said, “How much for me?” I said, “You know what? For you, $40.” He laughed and then be bought the book. I didn’t charge him $40 but he bought the book.
Marylou: Right. Yeah. I’m sure some of the audiences are thinking, “Marylou, this sounds good but we’re selling to enterprise, stuffy corporations, is this something we can really experiment on in the corporate world?
Tsufit: That is such a brilliant question. One thing I will say, total transparency here, what can get you the corner office in the corporate world can also get you fired.
Marylou: Yeah.
Tsufit: You really have to decide am I gonna play it by the book and be a middle manager and I’ll never really get the corner office and I’ll never really get promoted but I won’t be fired, or am I gonna really be me and I’m gonna take that risk?
I say this from the point of view of having been a lawyer. Like I said, a litigator for 10 years, and I have to admit that I wasn’t the Tsufit that you’re hearing today. I did perform at night and I did comedy and I did sing. But when I was at work, I was not the full version of myself that I’ve been lucky enough to present for the last 16 years as a coach. They make you conform.
Marylou: Yes.
Tsufit: The same thing sometimes happens in corporate, but if you make a decision that you’re gonna be you regardless of where you are, the chance, especially now, because things have changed so much in the last 10 or 20 years, partially with millenials. Millennials don’t put up with this crap.
Marylou: Exactly.
Tsufit: They just don’t. I won’t say it’s entitlement. I taught my four daughters, yeah, no, you shine, you step into the spotlight, you go out there, you don’t have to put up with any crap, you don’t have to answer it. They would never take the stuff that their parents would have taken. But still it’s a risk.
I will give you an example, when I started networking, I would go to these networking meetings and I would wear something that stood out. I wouldn’t wear a gray suit like a lot of the other people wore. I would wear an asian silk top or something ethnic looking or just something distinct and colorful and I had these crazy red glasses at the time. People would say to me in the first few months, “Tsufit, you really should dress professionally and you really should speak the way they did.”
Six months later, within six months of networking which is totally new to me. I’ve never even heard of it, chamber of commerce networking means all these things […], never heard of it. Within six month of starting to network, they were putting me on stage as the speaker or on panels to teach them how to do it better.
For six months, they’re telling me I’m doing it wrong and then they notice that I get lineups and they don’t. They’ve been going for five or ten years and nobody ever approaches them. I started teaching them you don’t have to be that “professional.” I call it […].
To answer your question about enterprise and stuffy corporations, in those stuffy corporations are real people. A corporation is a body that is an artificially created enterprise but it’s made up of people. Even though people are trying to conform, on the way home, they stop for sa beer with their friends and they speak in real ways to their friends, in a way that maybe they don’t in the office.
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: If you speak in that real way that they speak when they’re, let’s say, 10:00 at night and they’re putting up their feet and speaking to their best friend, if you speak to them that way, you may cut through, you may appear to be refreshing. Not to get political, I know that’s not usually a great idea but you guys over in America now have a president as a result of him saying, “You know what? I’m not going to speak the way the other 16 people on the podium speak. Whether it’s for good or for not good, I’m just going to speak the way I speak.”
I’m not suggesting that you guys emulate that example, definitely not, but there is a lesson there. People are craving an authentic voice so much that even if they don’t like that authentic voice, they are mesmerized by it, they can’t look away.
Marylou: You mentioned that we talked about the curiosity as being one of the triggers that in this 30 seconds in the spotlight, not knowing what to say. That may be a way for people to at least stop and notice. Are there other triggers that you use when you’re crafting these mini 30 second commercials?
Tsufit: Yeah, there’s tons of them. Once I went to a networking meeting, everybody stands up basically at these events. It’s your turn, you stand up, sometimes they give you a microphone, sometimes not, but it’s your turn you stand up.
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: What is the most obvious thing you could do to stand out when everybody stands up?
Marylou: The most obvious thing that I could do?
Tsufit: If everybody stood up, before me was a realtor who stood up and then a financial advisor stood up when it was his turn and then a coach stood up when it was her turn and then it’s my turn. What would be a good way to get attention?
Marylou: Stay seated.
Tsufit: I actually did that. Hundred people, everybody one at a time stands up, stands up, stands up, stands up, it’s my turn I stay seated. What have I done? I’ve created tension in the room. Everybody’s, “What the hell, why is she not standing up? She’s seated, everybody else is supposed to stand up.” Then I start talking from a seated position, half the people can’t even see me. Like, “What’s going on?”
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: That’s annoying but it causes a creative dissonance, it creates tension. This is what this is about. What is drama? What is humor? What are all these devices? If you reached into the spotlight, you’ll see a whole book full of them. What are they? They create tension and they give you attention.
I stay seated, I start talking. Everybody’s craning their neck, they’re trying to see me. I have a good loud voice so they can usually hear me but they’re pretty agitated. Then in the middle of the infomercial, at a perfectly timed point in the 30 seconds, what do I do that’s dramatic?
Marylou: Stand up.
Tsufit: All of a sudden, I took something that 99 other people did. They all stood up but it wasn’t dramatic, was it? Because they were expected to at a certain time. Just by delaying my standing up by 10-12 seconds out of my 30, and then standing up at an opportune moment, I created drama.
It just shows you how simple it is. Maybe while I’m seated, I talked about the problem and then I stood up and I maybe talked about the solution or I’m in the middle of the story, whatever it is. It doesn’t even matter what I was saying if all eyes were on me, because they were looking for me. It’s like you watched a movie and you see a commercial for Sprite and they crack open the bottle and they pour it over the ice and it crackles and all of a sudden you’re dying of thirst. You didn’t know you were thirsty until you saw that. They didn’t know they were thirsty to hear me, until I made it hard for them to hear and see me.
Marylou: Exactly.
Tsufit: Then I stand up. That’s one device that creates drama. Another one is in the middle of talking to someone, I’m talking and I’m talking at this phase and all of a sudden I’m quiet for a seconds.
Marylou: Silence.
Tsufit: There’s a pause, there’s a silence. That became dramatic. Humor creates attention and stories like we said. Don’t do silly things. I occasionally sing something because I’m a singer but people who aren’t, they sing a silly little thing. I saw a realtor, she stood up and help up her realtor sign. There’s one guy, I think he’s also a realtor, he made a hat out of his business cards. To me like, hokey, silly. It might get you noticed but at what cause? Is that gonna make me hire you as a realtor, not so much.
You have to be careful what you do to get noticed, but there are really so many little tricks. The other little device that I used when I’m speaking, usually longer than 30 seconds, but I could have done this in 30 seconds. I’ll tell them to pull out a piece of paper and a pencil or a pen to write down what I’m about to say because it’s really important.
I’ll ask them what are the three Ds of marketing, let’s say. I’ll give them a second to scramble for their pen or pencil or their computer, whatever they’re gonna write this down on. When I tell them to, 90% of the people do scramble for a paper and a pen because they think that this is like the ten commandments, it’s gonna be so profound that it should be sketched onto a tablet. Once they have the pen, I’ve already made what I’m about to say more important because they’re poised with this thing.
Then I’ll ask them, “What’s the first D of speaking in public?” I’ll let them answer. One or two will say, “Good delivery,” that starts with a D. Or, “Be dynamic.” That starts with a D. I’ll joke off and say, “Yeah, those are good guesses, absolutely wrong.” Or make some joke, I get them to laugh. Then I’ll say, “You know what? The number one D, write this down guys, is don’t bore them.” Everybody writes it down, writes it down, writes it down. It’s so profound what I just said. Why is it so profound, Marylou? Because I created drama around saying it.
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: If I had just gone straight and said it and not told them to write it down and not told them to get a pencil, they’d say, “Yeah, yeah, I know that.” Like, you’re not telling me anything I don’t know, that’s number one. Then I say, “Okay guys, what’s the second D of opening your mouth in public?” I’ll create another silence while they think and somebody else will throw out something, be dynamic or good delivery, whatever else they say. I’ll say, “Yeah, okay. I’ll say the second one is don’t bore them, and then number three is for god sakes, don’t bore them.” Then right away because of the rhythm in which I said it, the first one I said slowly, the second one I paused, and then the third one is I say it right away and I say it quickly and I say it with emphasis.
Again, I’m varying how I’m speaking. You can vary the volume, you can vary the speed. What I did was a trick, repetition, I could use literation, there’s so many of these. But the one thing that you have to keep in mind is you have to know your character before you step onto the stage. I know that my persona, when I’m in public, is with a lot of humor, irreverent, sometimes I’ll hold myself a little bit high. People take it because I use the humor but if I didn’t use the humor they’d just think, “Oh she’s full of herself.” But with humor people accept it.
Marylou: Right. Right.
Tsufit: You have to figure out what it is for you. You brought up a good point about “stuffy corporations.” That’s exactly what I say when I started networking. They’re not always so stuffy, they just think that you’re supposed to be that way but they don’t know any other way. If somebody eats broccoli everyday and they’ve never tasted ice cream, they don’t know that there are other foods there other than broccoli.
If you show them a taste of that and how you can still get business, the reason it worked, if I just went there and was a comedian and they all laughed and it didn’t result in anything, they’d say, “Yeah, she’s amusing but we’ve got to get serious, we got to get business.” But when they started seeing the line up to hire me or to speak to me or to invite me to speak and they saw that I was getting clients, then they had to take it seriously.
Marylou: Definitely.
Tsufit: The same thing in corporations.
Marylou: Such a great point on the tonality and varying speed, varying the way that you present your information. We have to rely a lot on the telephone for those first conversations. It’s not the words necessarily but it is the tone that gets us further into the pipeline and having further conversations with whoever we’re trying to influence or target or move through. That’s another area that I think we tend to be a little bit automaton, our delivery of how we speak to people on the phone and other one of those triggers.
Tsufit: Yeah. Let me tell you a secret, Marylou. What I just did, let me tell a you a secret. That’s a good line. Because the minute after I say let me tell you a secret or let me tell you a story. The minute somebody says let’s me tell you a story, they all of a sudden stop Facebooking somebody while they’re talking to you because they know they have to give you full concentration because it’s gonna be a story or it’s gonna be a secret or whatever.
The secret, there really is one. Robert Cialdini who wrote Influence and a bunch of other books and teaches about influence and what makes people pay attention wrote that a waitress can get a bigger tip if let’s say at the end when the waitress brings you the bill and she brings two little candies on the bill. Then she starts to walk away. There’s versions of this you can do on the phone but this is the example he used. She starts to walk away and then halfway while she’s gone, she turns back and she slips you two more candies.
If you do that according to Cialdini, your tip will be higher than if you don’t do that. It will be higher than if you left them four in the first place. It’s not about that you gave them four candies. It’s about that you gave them something extra, you gave them a special treat, you gave them special attention. The question for your listeners is if you’re doing most of your stuff on the phone or you’re prospecting on the phone or whatever, how can you do the two plus two candies instead of just two upfront or four upfront?
People try to overload with value or show them how good you are or to give them all four upfront. The four upfront aren’t as effective as two, “You know what? I’ll flip you two more. Don’t tell anybody.” You have to have integrity too. If everybody knows that it’s two and two more and don’t tell anybody, then you’ll get a reputation. You have to be cautious about having a bottom line. But it doesn’t mean you can’t be creative about making people feel that they’re special.
Marylou: Be authentically you in the process.
Tsufit: Be authentically you, yeah.
Marylou: The book is still on Amazon, Step Into The Spotlight, A Guide To Getting Noticed. I noticed a while ago, I don’t want to put you on the spot here. But a while ago, you had a free tips series that if my folks wanted to subscribe to your list, is that still available?
Tsufit: For you? For anybody else. But for Marylou’s listeners? Alright, yes. Go to www.spotlightsecrets.com, do it right now while you’re listening to the podcast. Marylou won’t mind, www.spotlightsecrets.com, put in your name and email. A second form will pop up because in Canada we have very stringent anti spam rules. A second form is going to ask you to give permission and also your country, enter a second time and you will be on the list.
I’ll tell you about that in a minute but the list started out to be a shortlist and people demanded more. Now, there’s ton of great stuff in there.
Marylou: I take lessons from this podcast for my troops for sure are to practice, because I say practice makes predictable. They all know it’s good to practice everything that we’re learning and doing and executing so that we can feel more comfortable, more natural on the phone. But these tips would be great because I think if we could sit down and write our hundred openers and have those, we would be so good at that initial call and get those butterflies out of the stomach and talk to the CEOs or those C-Suite people or whoever and get them engaged. That’s what it’s all about. We have something really important and good for our prospects that are just gonna transform their lives. Let’s open up that conversation in a way that gets them excited about it.
Tsufit: That’s exactly right. Even though these tips were initially made more for entrepreneurs in a live setting with the larger audience, you can definitely take those principles and adapt them exactly to the situation that you’re talking about and use some really to draw people in. Yeah, definitely check out that spot by Secret Series.
If you go to spotlightbook.com it will take you straight to the right place. In Amazon, where there’s even more tips about how to do that. I totally agree with what you said Marylou, it’s different way of saying what I’m saying earlier. A lot of people think that if you rehearse, if you practice, that you’re gonna sound robotic.
Marylou: Right.
Tsufit: It is possible to sound robotic, I’ve been in a networking meeting where you’re at the scrambled eggs table and you ask somebody, “What do you do?” They start spouting out this canned 30 seconds. You don’t want to be doing that. If you’re meeting people one on one or speaking to them one on one, it should just be a short little one liner maybe and then get them to talk first. Then once they said something, you can gear what you’re gonna say directly back to them. But you’ll still get some great ideas about the tactics and methods and triggers and all the things that we’ve been talking about today, humor, and just dynamic delicious devices to keep the people that you’re speaking to interested.
The other thing I would say, I’m sure a lot of your listeners make outgoing sales calls. The other thing you want to focus on at some point is changing, flipping that around a little bit so that the calls are more incoming than outgoing. What can you do to become visible, incredible in the market place so that people actively seek you out rather than you having to chase them. There are many, many ways to do that from speaking to writing a book–many, many ways to do that. But once people are coming to you, they’re more or less presold. You still have to make the sale but it changes the dynamic a lot. Some of the tips in the Spotlight Secrets can help you to flip that around so that they’re approaching you.
Marylou: Which is wonderful. I think we’re leveraging and using multiple levers, outreach is one, also referral engines are important to us. Warming up our clients that we’re gonna be asking them for referrals later on in our engagement together. Then inbound of course, it’s all related but we really need to master initially that cold to warm conversation to get people excited about who we are, why we matter, why this should change, why us and why now. Thank you so much.
Tsufit: That’s true, Marylou. I don’t make outgoing cold calls but the one area where I would do it is media. I don’t do it anymore really, but when I was starting, that’s an area of work because I wanted the inbound from the other people. I had to get influencers and media to put the word out, those calls were cold. All the devices that we talked about in the Spotlight Secrets can help you do that. If it can help you do that, it can definitely help with what you’re describing as well.
Marylou: Exactly, those multiple channels on the phone, email, direct mail even and then now video. Catching up to being speakers on video just to a mass level.
Tsufit: You are. Interesting you talk about email because when I was getting endorsements for Step Into The Spotlight book, I’m really blessed to have had some big heavyweight marketing and speaking endorsers and publicity. Generally, I was most comfortable on the phone because speaking is the most natural to me. I try to do that, but some people are just not reachable on the phone.
One of my endorsers, I got with a really well crafted email. It was doing all the things that we’ve talked about today and all the things that are covered in the Spotlight Secrets. It was using a joke. I had read the first few pages of his book and made some joke about something he said in his book. You know what the reply to my email was? It was the endorsement. He already gave me the endorsement right on the spot. You can absolutely do this on the multiple channels that Marylou has described
Marylou: Awesome, our time is up but I want to make sure that everyone knows where to go. I’m gonna put all the links of Tsufit’s page along with her bio. She has online classes. For those of you who are thinking, “I’m taking this to the next level.” I will make sure all her contact information is there so that you can start mastering–this piece in the funnel for us is the key that unlocks that door to more revenue.
Tsufit: Can I just mention one more thing, Marylou, if it’s alright?
Marylou: Of course.
Tsufit: I would like to cordially invite you, Marylou, and all your listeners to come join my Step Into The Spotlight community on LinkedIn. We have over 7,000 or 7,100 entrepreneurs, influencers, podcastors, media, professionals, and CEOs in that group. When you look at the list, you’ll be blown away about who’s in there, New York Times best selling authors. Go to spotlightgroup.biz and request to join. If I like you, I’ll accept you.
Marylou: I love it.
Tsufit: Tell me Marylou sent you.
Marylou: Thank you again for your time. This is wonderful information. Everybody go out and get that book, it’s a wonderful book. I have a signed copy in my library. I’m very pleased about that. Thanks again, loved to have you on the show.
Tsufit: My pleasure, thank you for having me.