These are your branded podcast's next four episodes

Is this your company when it's time to plan the next few episodes? That list is not a commissioning list. It's a list of things that exist Very few, if any, of your buyers are going to resonate with any of that. And yet weirdly, that's the kind of content format that most B2B podcasters are running with.

Those sorts of ideas fill up their content calendars. Always listicles, always generic advice aimed at nobody in particular. In the last episode, I got you to come up with your one winning sentence. Have you done that yet?

If you haven't, go back to that episode and do the work. That's how you grow. That's how you progress. Assuming you've now got that one sentence, we're going to use that to come up with the next four episodes that you are going to make.

And I can guarantee you, not one of these episodes will be in your content calendar even in draft format yet, because they don't come from topics, they come from your ideal buyers and what they are looking to find out. Welcome to B2B Podcasting Insights. I'm Neal Veglio, founder of Podknows Podcasting, a full-service podcast agency helping founders and people like you get better results from a B2B podcast. Okay, so as you probably have gathered from this podcast by now, I don't deal with wishy-washy generic advice.

What I deal with is actual real-world guidance and actionable tips that can get you from just basically creating a B2B podcast to getting results from a B2B podcast. And what I'm about to describe to you now is one of the frameworks that I use with corporate clients in order to help them get those results much more quickly, rather than sticking out content as part of a content marketing funnel, which most brands tend to do, to be honest. It's operated in the same way that they operate their blogs, their social media, the TikTok short form, whatever they're doing.

They tend to just stick stuff out there and hope it goes viral. And I can assure you, that is the slowest way to get results from any kind of content, whether it's a podcast or anything for that matter. So let me talk you through how I approach it when I'm working with corporate clients who have the staff and the resources to make this actually work, and this framework works best when you dig into your most recent three clients. I want you to contact them, and I want you to ask them two questions.

Question number one, what was it that prevented them from immediately taking action in working with you? Number two, what was it that changed their mind and made them work with you? Now, 20 minutes of back and forth via either phone, email, WhatsApp, Slack, whatever it is that you use to contact your clients, just that investment of time is gonna get you four solid episodes that will scale your conversions in a much quicker way than just putting content out there, because you're getting the content directly from people who've already converted, and they've converted amid objections.

Not only will you get four episodes, solid episodes, that you can run with next that speak to your ideal buyers within your prospects pipeline, you'll also have two spare episodes from a couple of the other answers that you can have in the can for five and six. More on that in a moment But the added benefit to this is not only that it gives you four solid ideas for episodes for the next four episodes of your podcast feed, but it's also extremely flattering for those clients that you've reached out to and asked for their valued opinion.

It's the most, I think… I'm gonna say it, it's the most undervalued move in B2B podcasting, and nobody's doing it. To be fair, not even me really until six months ago. There's a reason the format of this show has massively changed in recent episodes. Now, we could end the episode there, to be completely honest, because these four episodes alone are gonna do more for your business and your conversions than any other strategy combined.

They're gonna be doing all the heavy lifting. But while we're here, let's have a look at some other ideas that can completely eradicate your content calendar. And I can assure you, your $50 an episode podcast producer on Fiverr hasn't even thought of these. So let's look at the three things.

So number one, your email is a data goldmine. Go back through your recent correspondence with your ideal clients, those people you've been warming up, trying to get them to click on the payment link, and find the last message you got from one of them where they went quiet. Now, whatever is in that message is the objection that has killed a deal, and if it's coming up time and time again, it's a recurrent message that you're getting from clients that don't wanna work with you.

So find that objection that actually exists, not the one that you assume exists. Number two, let's look at the thing that you find yourself explaining every single week, because if you and your sales team are having that conversation over and over again, it's no longer a conversation. Now it's an episode you just haven't recorded yet. Get it down, note it, plan to record it.

The third thing you're looking out for is that moment when somebody said, "Oh, I hadn't thought about it like that. Good point." That's a statement that pees all over every wannabe LinkedIn influencer's content pillars. It's an idea that's already changed someone's mind, and it then feels like it should be tested to change other people's minds, and that's more than any entry on your content calendar can claim.

So here's what you're listening for Not subjects, sentences. Things actual human beings have said. And then what you're looking to do to test this is identify whether you could write those sentences out as the title for an episode and it just works perfectly without any editing. If the answer to that is yes, congratulations, you've got a great episode lined up.

So let's talk about what you do once you've identified these four specific episodes. They're not content, they're a sequence. They are literally a sales nurturing process in audio and video form. And here's the order that they go in, because it's the order a belief changes in.

Are you ready? So episode one is the one that actually names the problem in their own words. The thing is, you can't change what somebody believes until you demonstrate you understand what they believe. So this is gonna be the episode that describes their situation better than they could ever describe it themselves, and that's gonna come from your client calls and the conversations you're having when you reach out to ask them what it was that prevented them from buying from you and what changed their mind.

Once you have those answers, that's the episode one framework of what do they believe, how do we change that belief? Episode two, the one that kills their other idea, usually a cheaper idea. Every buyer has an obvious alternative solution in mind where if all else fails and they can't afford the solution you're offering, they've got a backup plan. Every single buyer on the planet has this.

Usually it's DIY, sometimes it's someone a bit cheaper, less proven, less competent, but enough to get them started. And until you've convinced them that that option is off the table- Nothing you say to them will convince them. This is literally the, "Yeah, you could try that, but if you do, you're wasting time and money." That episode, the one very few of us actually put out, to be fair.

Episode three, the one that kills the objection that kills the deals, and I'm not talking about the polite objection that they say out loud like, "Oh, I have my business partner as well, and they like to get involved in this. I need to have a conversation with them first, and then I'll get back to you." They're not getting back to you. There is no business partner that needs to be involved in any of these conversations.

It's their way of letting you down gently that everything you've said to them has disappointed them, and they don't wanna proceed. But they don't wanna tell you that right now while you're in a Zoom call with them or a Teams call with them, and it's gonna make it hella awkward. So you wanna go behind that. You wanna find the real objection, the one hidden in the words they didn't say, and it's usually contained in some way in the most recent email they sent before they went quiet.

That's usually where you're gonna find it because most people don't get as far as the Zoom or Teams call in the first place because they know they're gonna have to have that awkward conversation with you where they have to invent a business partner that they need to have a conversation with. And who has time for that? Episode four is gonna be the one that makes them moving forward feel safe. So this is where you are outlining what it costs to do nothing and be wrong.

So in that one, you're outlining what it costs to make the wrong decision, what it costs to do nothing, and what happens if they say yes. And this one comes from the questions and answers that are going back and forth in that final conversation before they sign and agree to work with you. Here's an example of all of this in action which we could imprint onto last week's founder FAQs correspondent, Jeremy from Nuneaton, who was the ops software guy. Do you remember him?

He was too shy to leave a voicemail, but he emailed to say he was panicking about niching down because he felt he was cutting himself off from future opportunities. Imagine I helped him come up with his one winning sentence which could be, you know, this podcast exists to convince ops managers that their spreadsheet workarounds are actually costing them more in time and money than the software that he provides would So that when budget finally appears, Jeremy's is the system they've already been mentally using anyway for the past six months, and now they're just formalizing it.

So his four episodes then would be, number one, the spreadsheet three people are scared to touch. Number two, why hiring another ops coordinator didn't fix any of the problems. Number three, what happens to our data if we switch and it goes wrong? And number four, what it actually costs to leave ops tidy up for another year and how we benefit if we move forward now See how it works?

Not one of those ideas for an episode is on anyone's content calendar anywhere. I defy you to prove me wrong, and no chatbot was ever gonna come up with those, because every one of those came out of a human sentence spoken by a human who'd experienced the very human problem. So once you've got those four episodes in mind, here's what you're gonna do. Number one, you're gonna publish them in that order, and the sequence is the entire point.

Episode three does nothing if you haven't eradicated the cheap fix in the previous episode before that. Then you wanna get feedback on the shifts these episodes have created for your buyers. Then you're gonna get feedback on the shifts your prospects are experiencing from consuming the content. By the time you've published these four, hopefully you'll have necessary feedback and data in order to make informed decisions about what the next four of these is gonna sound like and look like.

You can already see the end of that content calendar, can't you? And I alluded before that once you've got the four episodes sorted out, plus the two spare ones from the other questions and answers, what you now have is room to move. So once you've got feedback from the first four, some other questions and answers are gonna a- arrive from that which gives you fresh content, meaning five and six can be in the content bank for a rainy day. They could become evergreen content.

They could be something you revisit maybe three months from now when some of your clients are not quite as forward with their feedback. So here's your Monday morning action. Are you ready for this? Get in touch with those three past clients.

Don't put it off. Do it Monday, and ask them those questions. Number one, what was it that was initially putting you off moving forward with us? And number two, what convinced you to go ahead?

And when you got your answers, keep me posted. Let me know. Email me, Neal, N-E-A-L, @podknows, that's P-O-D-K-N-O-W-S, .co.

uk. All right, Founder FAQs. This is the part of the show where I take questions from the general public that have either emailed or left a voicemail and see if we can bring them a little bit of clarity within this episode. This time it's Dawn in Stockport.

Dawn says, " Batching the recording is absolutely great. It means that you know that you've got the content ready to go. It takes the pressure off of you and stops you having to do episode to episode to episode, week in, week out, with no content ready to go. It means if you've got a slow-moving editor who tends to take forever to edit your episodes, you have got plenty of content to send them to get them to do it sequentially, rather than waiting for you to send them your fresh audio and them to edit it in time for your publishing schedule.

But this only works if you're doing it as a living content silo. In other words, you don't have to work episode to episode to episode in order and have them ready before you publish. Because then what you're doing is you're batching your journey. You're And your experience doesn't work week to week.

Your experience fluctuates. Sometimes you have major shifts that happen within the same week. Sometimes it takes weeks to develop. So what you want is your episodes to reflect the stage you're at in your entrepreneurial journey.

Why make someone wait for four months for your episodic content to catch up with a massive breakthrough you had? So 12 episodes recorded in advance essentially means 12 decisions made before you had 11 episodes worth of new information to work from. So my advice is, Dawn, keep batching your recording days for sure, and keep recording on those batch recording days. But have regular monthly planning sessions in between the recordings to ensure the content you're recording on the batching days is current and where you currently are.

Don't record three months later what you wrote back in January. I hope that helps. And if you also have some sort of question that you'd like to ask us as part of the Founder FAQ segment, then you've got a choice. You can either email me, neal@podknows.

co.uk, or leave us a voicemail, podknows.co.uk/voicemail.

That's P-O-D-K-N-O-W-S.co.uk/voicemail. Here's this week's quick tip.

Write the episode description before you record it. I know that sounds weird. We all sort of like just put episode descriptions in as kind of part of the content admin of publishing usually. But what that then means is that you are working with what you've recorded and has been committed to post-production, and is now baked in.

And if that's not particularly interesting, you are stuck with an episode description that describes something akin to watching paint dry. Especially when you're doing it in a hurry and you haven't got the creative time to sort of sit down and go, "How can I polish this turd?" So instead, think about writing out what you want the episode to be, not the full script, just the idea in three sentences before you record a word. And that includes even if you're scripting, because if you've written a script but your episode description describes something way more interesting based on your sort of snapshot of where you want this thing to go, well, that's quickly gonna expose the flaws within your script, which is always a good thing.

And this is the cheapest possible way of finding out you never really had an episode in the first place. So there we go. If you want help turning last week's winning sentence into four cracking episodes that are gonna really push the needle for your business, that's what my diagnostic is for. I can certainly help you with that and give you a wider view on where your podcast sits within your business.

Go to podnos.co.uk/diagnostic. That's P-O-D-K-N-O-W-S.

co.uk/diagnostic. And if you still don't know who your ideal buyer is, then I've got a one-pager for that. It's still active.

You can still get ahold of it. Go to podnos.co.uk/ideal-client.

So there you go. You got four episodes that you know now to make. In the next episode, what happens after you've made them? And here's the thing, the most valuable listener that you will get to those four episodes will not come from any RSS feed.

Confused? You better check out the next episode then, hadn't you? If you found this episode useful, please do rate it and leave a comment wherever you're consuming this podcast, whether that's Apple Podcast, Spotify, or YouTube, and then share it with a friend that you know also has a B2B podcast and could do with a little bit of help in getting better results from it. And remember to contact those three clients before you commit to one more episode.

If you wanna get somebody to help make sense of what they tell you, doesn't have to be me, make sure you reach out and get some advice on it. And good luck with your continuing efforts to get good results from your B2B podcast. Chat next week.