From Content Machine to Sales Asset: Turning Your Podcast Into a Conversion Tool

What if your podcast could be more than a never-ending to-do list, one more thing that gets consistently pushed further out and out and out until you have no other option but to get it done right then so that you don't fade away?

What if instead, it was an active and productive member of your sales team? What if it had become the asset you always hoped it would be? Or maybe the asset, whoever convinced you to podcast, sold you it would be. We're going to turn it into exactly that. That's what we're going to talk about today.

Welcome to The More Profitable Podcast with Stacey Harris. I'm Stacey. This is the spot to learn more about the strategies, tactics, and tools you need to build your more profitable podcast. My team and I work every day with podcasters like you to shift shows from frustrating time sucks to productive members of your sales team, because your show should be built to generate and convert leads. So let's get into it.

One of the most dangerous mistakes we can make with our podcast is thinking of it purely as content. Content is a bucket to be filled. It's a box to be checked. It's something built for consumption and then to move on. That's not what we want our podcast to be.

When you're building a podcast with the intent for it to generate, educate, and convert right-fit clients, you're not building content, you're building a sales asset. You are building a part of your sales team that can work when your sales team is unavailable.

For most of us—I know this is true for me and I'm betting it's true for you—we are our sales team. Even those of us who maybe have some people on our team who help out with sales, I have clients, absolutely, who have one or two people on their team who help with sales, those sales efforts, and that sales team as a whole is still led by the owner, is still led by my client.

I'm guessing the same is true for you. Even if you're someone who does have a VA or a salesperson on your team, you're still driving that ship. You're still setting the direction of that sales messaging.

For that to be the case and you still be thinking about this mechanism as purely content, you're missing out on a lot of opportunity. But shifting is going to take thinking about some things differently and making some shifts to how you get your podcast done.

That's what I want us to talk about today, because the value of your podcast changes when your perspective changes, when your approach changes. It is so wildly shifted when we start to have an expectation for it and build it with the intent of fulfilling that expectation.

I see a lot of podcasters, and this is why I opened this up with this being dangerous because I see a lot of podcasters. I talk to a lot of podcasters who are feeding a content machine, who are behaving as if they just need to get the next episode out. They're building something where they're focused on bingeability and consumption.

I'm not focused on bingeability and consumption. Does that mean people don't ever binge the show? No, they do. But they binge it not with the purpose of filling their time, not where the show is enough, the binging is the whole act. No, no. That is an indicator of my warmest leads.

Those people who move into binge mode, those are the people most likely to get on my calendar. Those are the people who go from discovering my show to hiring me for something in a matter of days or weeks instead of months or years because the show is not built to be bingeable. It is built to move you through a decision-making process.

Sometimes you're going to make that decision over the course of a couple of days listening to a lot of those assets all at once and sometimes you're going to listen to those assets over at a much longer period of time, but either way, you're going to end up at the same decision and more often than not, if you get to the end of that decision-making road and the timing is right, we're going to work together. I see this consistently and I want you to see the same consistently.

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As we dig into this, I think the first mindset shift we have to make when we're moving from the idea of creating content to building a sales asset is basic definitions, really defining what this is. When we're talking about creating content—I've said this before, and frankly, I will say it again—we're talking about something built to be consumed. We're building a consumable good.

The shows where we're talking about content are shows where we're looking to build as big of an audience as we can because we want to sell their attention to sponsors. Sponsor-backed shows are content.

Let me be immensely clear. They're not bad. Content is not bad. Content is what makes the internet move really, but content is built for consumption. It's not built to move you in any particular direction.

However, a sales asset is content built with a specific purpose. The purpose is not built to consume and move on. I'm not trying to hold you in this content for as long as possible. I'm trying to educate you into a decision.

We talked a little bit about this last week when we were talking a lot about educating into a decision, educating into empowerment. These are the hallmarks of a sales asset.

Consumption of content is not going to make an impact. It's not going to change businesses. It might help someone change a perspective. It might help give somebody a new kind of visibility, meaning they're seeing something differently or the person who's creating it is getting seen differently.

But there's not ultimately a decision being made. Honestly, this is one of the reasons I have a real concern about people who launch shows for increased visibility. Increased visibility is content.

You're going to be building a content machine because it becomes about you just being seen and heard. Not you being seen as heard as an expert. Not you being seen as heard as the solution to somebody's problem. But I just want you to see me. I just want you to hear my words.

Again, this is not bad. This can work really well for somebody who wants to build a show supported by sponsors. But if you're building a show that is going to be supported by the sales in your business, you're a service provider, you're a coach, you're a consultant, and you're looking to drive them to purchase, content is not the solution to that.

If your show is self-sponsored, if your show is about making sure people understand that you can support them in XYZ, then you're building a sales asset, an inanimate object that is part of your sales team.

Think about this in the same way you would your Manychat robot, or whatever automation tool you're using to communicate with people and get people information. This is that. This is the thing that allows them to hear from you even when you're sleeping. This is the thing that allows somebody to be actively in your sales process even with you not on the phone with them.

Now, does this mean this replaces any ability anywhere else in your business you have to sell? No, but you know what it does? It makes it a heck of a lot easier because they're already starting the conversation before they get to you.

My half-an-hour sales call is not a half-an-hour sales call. It's a half-an-hour sales close. It's a gut check. It's an, “Are we sure this is the right decision for you?” We frequently get on sales calls and put people in different offerings than they thought they were going to have. More than once we've had somebody come through and thought production was going to be the right call for them.

But really, they were just starting out. They needed an intensive, a Podcast Strategy Intensive, where we built their 20-episode experiment and we built their container to make sure that they liked doing this, to make sure that this was going to be a way they wanted to create content.

While in that experiment, whether they went beyond 20 episodes or not, they built something that they could continue to use even if long-term this wasn't what they wanted to do. That's an instance where they were sold on working with us. They knew they wanted to build this kind of thing. They knew they wanted to work with me to do that. However, I still needed a sales call to make sure that they were in the container that was the best fit for them.

This doesn't bypass sales. That's not what we're talking about when we're talking about building a sales asset. But I was able to bring them into a call, have a conversation. They were able to ask high-quality clarifying questions and I was able to answer them so that we put them in what worked best for them.

More often than not, they go and they do their experiment and then they love their show because they have built an actual asset that is already working for them and then they move into production.

They move into production as a show ready to leverage what we do in production. They came in ready to take advantage of this tool that they were building. They built this tool in a way that it worked.

A great example of this is the conversation I had with Nicole Otchy on this show before. I'll put a link in the show notes to that and to the 20-episode experiment episode because I think that these are really great pieces that go with this episode.

Nicole is a great example because she has worked with us in every way you can. She has done an Intensive. She has been in the Mastermind. She's now a production client. She's booked one-off one-hour strategy calls with me.

There's not a version of my offer that Nicole didn't work in in some way because she worked with us in the way she needed with where her show was then, and with the tool she was building at that time, with where she was as a podcast host and a business owner in that season.

That's why a sales call is still relevant because you're likely still the person who has the best perspective on where these people will fit, and where the best next step for them is. But you're able to dig into that. You're able to quickly identify that and put them in the right place because you're not spending your sales call convincing them that this is a good idea. They come knowing that this is a good idea. They come knowing that you are the solution because they have clarity around what you do and how you do it.

That’s the shift. That’s the thing I want you to be building. Notice, none of that was about visibility. None of that was about being seen. It was about being seen as an expert and about being seen as a solution. That’s different. That's the shift I want you to be thinking about. I don’t want to be visible. I want to be seen as an expert.

I don't want people to just be aware that I exist. I want them to be aware that I am the solution to XYZ problem. That's all well and good, but how do you do that? What does that look like? It doesn't look like answering a lot of how-to questions.

It doesn't look like featuring an endless bucket of guests in hopes that they'll share with their audience and their audience will come hear them talking on your podcast and realize, “Whoo! This person is exceptional. I can’t wait to buy from them.”

That’s not what it looks like. Yet those are both some of the first things you’ll see as suggestions for content types when you download the latest TikTok expert or Reels person running ads to you telling you that you'll never have to sell again if you just launch a podcast. That's exactly what they'll tell you to do.

But you know what you need to do instead? You need to be weaving in your sales messages into your content. You need to be identifying what you're talking about at your planning stage based on your sales calendar.

When you sit down and talk to somebody about a content plan, if they're asking you questions like, “So what do you want to talk about?” or “What do you think your audience wants to hear?” or they ask you who your audience is and then they jump into answer the public and drop that in and you get 900 how-to of all the different pieces of your business, no, you are building content. You are not building a sales asset.

The first question you should be asking yourself is, “What am I selling? Who am I selling it to? How am I selling it?” It’s been a while since I rolled that out, hasn’t it? Those are the questions. If you cannot answer those questions, it’s not time for you to be planning content because anything you create without answers to that question is content for the sake of content, content for the sake of visibility.

It is not you building a sales asset to drive them through a decision-making process. This is the fundamental shift. This is the how. This is the “This only gets done if.” You have to start with “What are you selling?”

When we sit down with clients either in intensives or in the mastermind or for our quarterly calls with clients, it's what are we selling for the next three months. The first time you do this, it doesn't have to be three months.

If the easiest way for you to get started is the next time you record an episode, you say, “What am I selling right now?” if you're sitting here and it's Wednesday and you need to put out next Tuesday's episode, and so today's the day you're going to sit down and record it, what am I selling this week? What am I selling next week? What am I trying to put people in now? Answer that question.

This is something that I challenge people to ask themselves with every episode. This is something I still—652 episodes into the show—think about when I sit down to record an episode, “What am I selling?” If you look in the dashboard for our podcast or for any of our clients, there is a column, there is a spot for CTA, call to action.

Do you know what that is? That's the “What am I selling?” column. I always have, and I'm looking at it right now as I record this episode, I can see where the episode is in the process, I can see the rough name of the episode, the number, who's working on it right now, that's me. I can see when this is due now. Then I see CTA. I can see what I'm selling. Then I can see underneath that the release date.

This allows me to be really, really clear on what I need to focus on in that episode, where we're trying to move people to, what decision you and I are making in the course of the episode, which is essentially “Is now the right time for this?” because we sell mostly the same thing all the time.

I want you to be looking at, even if it's just for the next episode, what am I selling? As you get the capacity, or if you sit down with someone like me—I'd love to sit down with you—we're going to talk about what are you selling in the next quarter?

More often than not, the people I work with, there are not a lot of variables here. Especially if you're like me in a service provider, it's one of a couple of things. For us, it's either production, the intensive, or the mastermind.

The mastermind's really the only thing with a timing element, with a mechanism for like there's an entrance and an exit. Intensives, you can book intensives any time. You may not be able to do one with me next week, but I have one or two minimum slots available every month.

Of course, for production, as long as we have spots to take on a production client, yeah, I can take those at any time of the year. This question gets easier and easier to answer as you have the clarity around your offers.

This is one of the reasons I frequently tell people who want to launch a show to go work with somebody to build out their offers first. Because if you're building content with the idea that someday you're going to sell them something, it's going to be hard to make that shift from content for the sake of content, that visibility content, to a sales asset.

You're going to have to change your mindset. You're going to have to shift the way you think about your show. That may very well be the position you're in right now, where you're having to think about, “How do I shift this? How do I turn this boat? How do I change my perspective?” The fastest way, in my opinion, to change that perspective is to start every recording session with “What am I selling in this episode?”

Now, what I want you to notice and what I want us to wrap up this conversation with is nowhere in here did I say that your content is going to be explicitly about selling. I have, in the course of this episode, built a sales asset. We've mentioned offers. We've mentioned how they work. We've differentiated how we work from other podcast producers/“strategists.” We've talked about all of these things.

This episode is a sales asset because it is educating you in the kind of shows we produce, in the kinds of clients we work with, in the things you need to know to get the most out of working with us.

Also, you have learned how you need to be thinking about your show to get your show where you want to get your show. So there was education here but we've still built a solid sales asset and that comes because I know sitting in that column, that CTA column, it says Podcast Strategy Intensive because these are the things somebody needs to know to get the most out of working with us in a Podcast Strategy Intensive.

If we're going to sit down and we're going to build out your Q1, Q2 whatever content plan, you need to know what you're selling in whatever quarter that is. You need to be somebody who's thinking about your show as a sales asset and not as a consumption tool to be a good fit to get the most out of that time together.

So I want you to look at where can you be doing the same with your show? Because yes, some episodes will be full-on sales episodes. A great example of that is an audio sales page.

In the last couple of weeks, you've heard me do one of these for the mastermind. We've done a version of this for the Podcast Strategy Intensive. I'll make sure it's linked in the show notes. Those are sales episodes because they're audio sales pages.

This episode, not an audio sales page, not an endless pitch, but is absolutely a sales tool because it is educating you into your decision. To use the language we used last week, it's educating you into being empowered enough to shift your show the way you need to shift it to get the results you want from it.

That's what I want you to be looking at as you sit down to record this week. Is this episode that I'm building another piece of content? Am I just feeding the machine? Or is this going to help someone listening make a decision whether now is the right time?

If now is not the right time, but it might be down the road, is it educating them into becoming the best client they can be until they're ready, until the time is right? Or just as importantly, is it helping identify that this is not the right fit for them so that they can go find their solution?

Because if you’re somebody who’s building content who wants to build a massive audience, who wants to sell that audience to sponsors, that’s not bad, it’s just not what I built. It’s not what I do.

So I want somebody who’s listening to this show to be able to easily identify that as well so that they can go find their right solution. The last thing I want to do is hold you hostage here when I can't help. I know the same is true for you. You don't want to hold them hostage here.

But when we build content for the sake of content, we are enabling them to fake work, to procrastinate through consumption, to feel like they're doing something because they learned something without ever actually implementing, without ever actually actioning, and without ever really asking themselves, “Is this the direction I'm trying to move this in? Is this the direction I need to go in to find the solution to my problem?” We want to be the solution, not a distraction, all right?

As we wrap this up, I do want to remind you, we do have spots open now for our Podcast Strategy Intensive and this is the work we're doing. I will tell you, as somebody who does this professionally, it's easier with somebody else, I still sit down with my coaches, my peers, or my team and I say, “What do you think of this? Help me talk this through,” because there is immense value in getting it out of your head and getting some perspective.

There's that cliche about being able to read the label from outside the jar. Can't read the label from inside the jar. This is very true when it comes to doing this kind of work. Having somebody on the outside who can help you with that label, incredibly powerful.

The Podcast Strategy Intensive is that. Head on over to uncommonlymore.com/intensive. Book a chat with me. We will sit down. We'll make sure that it's the right fit for you and we will get you on my calendar. I can't wait to do it. I will see you right back here next week.

Thanks so much for listening to this show. Remember that content consumption does not make changes, so commit to doing something from today's episode. Maybe it's taking action on what we talked about. Maybe it's reaching out to me and learning more about Podcast Strategy Intensives or what podcast production looks like with our team. All of that is over at uncommonlymore.com.

If you haven't yet signed up for The Podcast Newsroom, I want to remind you that is a great next step. If you're not really sure what comes next, hang out over there. Get those exclusive private episodes. That's over at podcastnewsroom.com. The last favor I will ask, because social proof is endlessly important for sure, is to leave a rating and review for the show. If you go to ratethispodcast.com/more, that's the easiest way to do it. But I would love to hear what you thought of the show, what you think of the show, and if the show has been helpful for you. I can't wait to chat with you. This is just the start of the conversation. Reach out so we can keep it going. Talk soon.