Talk To People - Daisy Ferns

Hayley Baxter: So Daisy, hello, welcome to the podcast.

Daisy Ferns: Thank so much for having me, it's lovely to be here.

Hayley Baxter: So in a world where everybody's focused on social media, growing an audience, what's the next trend that's gonna get me to go viral, your one thing is the complete opposite of this, which is talk to people, which sounds very, very simple, but actually, my experiance and sometimes can be very, very hard. So just share a little bit around where that comes from and why that's your one thing.

Daisy Ferns: Yes. So yeah, it is really simple. And actually you say it sounds simple, but actually it's not. On the kind of face of it, it is really simple. I think we should all be talking to each other more. So where did it come from is in the businesses that I've had over the past sort of five or six years, I think the key thing that has made them successful is just getting out there and talking to people. And I find so often that people exactly how you said in the advent of social media and everything being online, people hide behind dropping links and emails and people don't just pick up the phone or arrange to meet each other anymore. So for me, it's really important and it's how I've my businesses.

Phil Davenport: What do you think is preventing people from picking up the phone, from getting out there and talking to people?

Daisy Ferns: I think it's this whole idea that we are sold that you can do everything, you can build a six figure, seven figure business by being on social media. And some people do, some people absolutely do do that and they make a huge success of it. But I think sometimes we kind of sold that dream, aren't we? So we just post and we post and we post and we forget about the whole human element of things behind it, which is... exactly as you said, it's talking to people, it's picking up the phone, even if we are on ⁓ a keyboard and just typing out a message, again, it's just having a conversation with people rather than relying on an algorithm or as you said, Hayley, something going viral. And I think we've become so reliant on technology and on social media that we forget about the human connection side of things.

Hayley Baxter: Is it something Daisy that you've always done naturally? And was there a point where you realised, you know what, this thing is really making my business as successful and it's really making a difference in my business?

Daisy Ferns: Absolutely, 100%. The only time I ever got in trouble at school, Hayley, was for talking too much. So it's just, my mum's the same as well. It's just me. I am a talker. I build relationships with people. In a previous life, before I had my own business, I was a student recruitment manager at the University of Nottingham. And again, people used to say to me, was so successful because I wouldn't just send an email and think, ⁓ well, I've not got a reply. I'd pick up the phone. go and arrive on the doorstep of a school with a box of donuts and just again, just try and build those relationships with people. So, but I think it's something I've always done without actually realising it as a skill or as something that I did. I've just always done it. And as I mentioned, I've had businesses in the past and I started off actually in the kind of parenting space. And again, it's about building relationships with people, which is something that made that successful. and then turning that into a six-figure business, people would say to me, well, you know, how have you done that? As you know what it's like, people want to know how you've done it. And I was like, I don't know really, I've just talked to people and they wanted to join my course or join my training programme sort of thing. So I've never really thought of it as lead generation, which is obviously what I do now. I've just always done it. Does that make sense?

Hayley Baxter: Yeah.

Phil Davenport: So how would you systemize that? Because I suppose one of the things that we've got as small business owners is we all think that we've got an incredible product. And for the majority of us, it's I've got an incredible product, but I haven't got people that are warm and receptive to talk to about that product. What is step one in the reach out? mean, other than obviously turn up at business doors with some donuts, which must be a massive win.

Daisy Ferns: Hey, it's something you can do, it really is. So within our ⁓ Lead Gen team, we kind of have a whole process that we follow. So it isn't, I know I said it's as simple as just talk to people and it kind of is, but actually if you want to do it well, there is a kind of a system to it. And I think that people do have more warm. leads in their audience than they realize. So if you look at anybody's, again if we take social media because it's something that most businesses do, you know even if you've only got a hundred followers on Instagram or something, that's still a hundred people that have actually chosen to be in your world and therefore have some sort of an interest in what you're doing. So it is about starting conversations rather than waiting for people to come to you and enquire because I don't know about you two but I get a lot more business from actually going out there and starting a conversation with somebody than I do kind of inbound inquiries. So it starts with that kind of personal outreach. It is then about asking the right questions, actually talking to people and nurturing them, qualifying them to see if they are actually right for your product or service. Because I Hayley, for example, you focus on more established business owners in your business. So, okay, you might have some questions that you ask. to see if they are your kind of perfect lead, your ideal client. You're driving the conversation forwards and you're not just saying, let me know or dropping a link and leaving the ball in their court. You're actually kind of steering that conversation until somebody says yes or no thank you, I'm not interested. So kind of that's the whole process behind it. But it is just about starting with the people that are already in your world and have shown an interest in what you do. Does that answer the question? I've gone off on a tangent, haven't I?

Phil Davenport: I it was really good. think where it leads me to is I think we're all afraid of being that person when you turn up at a network meeting or you turn up at any kind of business event and they say, hi, Daisy, how are you? And you say, I've got, and they say, right, okay, so what I've got is I bet you, how interested are you in AI? And it's how do we sit between, because I think we all do want to connect and become friends and build those relationships. at the same time we want to qualify each other to see is this the kind of person maybe not even that I can sell something to but that I could bring into my network and maybe you know build that. How do we how do we flirt between those kind of two worlds?

Daisy Ferns: and Yeah. It's really hard, isn't it? It's really tricky because you don't want to just get so into the friend zone when actually this person might be an ideal client that you can never feel like you can sell to them and it becomes awkward. You don't want to pitch to somebody straight away. That's a big no no-no. ⁓ I think it is just about, I suppose it's just like how, you know, if I think about somebody on the school run or something, I'm not going to go straight in and say, do you want to be my friend? I mean, I might, but you know, ⁓ so that's the kind of whole thing. ⁓ But then do you want to stay in the small talk bit forever if you do actually want to be their friend? It's having the conversation, maybe talking about what you do, talking a bit about your kids or your dogs or whatever it is that's important to you. And then what I quite like to do is ask them more about what they do and who it's for. And then I can think, is this for me? And then usually it's reciprocal and they say to me, what is it that you do? And I tell them and then. What I find is I don't like to be too pushy. I don't like the whole really salesy selling. I like the conversational selling. And I feel like if you're clear enough in articulating what you're doing, who it's for, people that then want that service will come back to you. So if they are then in your world and maybe they are seeing your content or you're kind of commenting on their stuff or they're reading your emails or whatever. when they do get to a point of this is for me, they will come back to you. Or if you find actually, you know, I'm running this day or something, you can go back to them and say, ⁓ I'm running this and I thought of you, would you like to come? Because you've already got that open dialogue, if that makes sense.

Hayley Baxter: So what do you think stops people from doing this?

Daisy Ferns: I think there's a few things. think people think they don't have any leads or they don't have anybody to reach out to. Whereas I think for the most part, unless you live under a rock and you don't talk to anybody and you don't have any kind of online presence or email list or anything, that's not going to be true. In fact, I'd love to make a bet that anybody listening to this, anybody out there could make a list of 20 to 50 people. right now that they could reach out to. So I think it's people don't think that they've got people to reach out and start a conversation with or reignite a conversation with. I think people don't know what to say. And I would probably say to them, you know, what would you say to a friend? You're not going to go straight in a pitch. You just talk to people. You say, how was your trip to wherever? Because maybe you've done a bit of nosing on their profile. You You could say to them if you feel bold enough to do so, I saw that you opened my email about whatever it is. Is this something you're interested in? It's just, you know, again, remembering people are human and just talking to them. I think people don't have time, especially busy business owners, because it is quite what I'd call busy work, constantly being in your DMs, going back and forth on email. And it's just one of those things really, though, that you have to do because if you want this pipeline of people ready to buy from you, the conversations that you're having now are going to be your sales in a month or two months or three months time. So if you don't have that pipeline, if you're not constantly having those conversations, you either need to realise I'm not going to have the sales or perhaps outsource to somebody. And that's where we would come in. We can do that lead generation for people. So I think time is a big factor. and I've actually got one more as well. I think people are worried about being pushy and salesy because we've all been burnt, haven't we, by the sleazy car salesmen or the gyms are really bad for it as well being really pushy. I think we've all been burnt and we don't want to be that person so we just avoid it altogether or we avoid talking about our offer or we avoid inviting people to things because we don't want to make it awkward, whereas in actual fact, you're helping people if they've shown interest in what you're doing.

Hayley Baxter: I think that's a really, that last point I think is probably in my head, that's the biggest one for me because I feel like when you're being genuine, when you, you if I'm, I don't know, I'm somewhere and I just start talking to somebody, I'm just talking to them because I'm in that situation and we've met each other and, you know, whatever the conversation goes like.

Daisy Ferns: Thank you.

Hayley Baxter: Whereas when I feel like you're doing it intentionally, I feel like this, there's something that just doesn't, it doesn't sit right with me. It's a really weird feeling. And I think that that probably stops me that people will know that I'm only starting that conversation because actually I want to generate leads and I want to grow my business. What would you say to that?

Daisy Ferns: This one. But then I've had this come up quite recently actually. I think if you're doing something from a business profile and you're sharing your tips about your accountancy firm, you're not there to make friends. And I think that if people think that you're there just to be their friend, and it's not about not being genuine because you're such a lovely person, Hayley, but it's about, can I help you? Isn't it? It's about serving them and but you're doing it in a nice way, but you're being friendly so that you can show them the kind of the true you and the service that they'll get if they come on board with you. You're not doing it just because you wanna make friends with your 5,000 followers or whatever it might be. It's showcasing your business and showing what service they will get. And if you think of it like that, as in I have this service to offer, I can really help you. It's reframing it, isn't it? It's not, I'm gonna push this on you because I need to make money. It's, I've got this amazing service. I'm really good at it. Is there any way I can help you? And you're not gonna go, well, I hope you're not gonna go into somebody and just say, do you wanna buy my thing? You're gonna ask them questions. You're gonna say, what sort of accounting service have you got at the moment and how are you finding it? And if you're getting the answers that say to somebody that are indicating that. somebody could be a potential lead, you can say to them, would you like to have a look at the office we've got? People can say no, can't they?

Phil Davenport: Okay, so you know me, I like this because it is a little Machiavellian, but I'm quite a big fan of Machiavelli, I'm not gonna lie to you. So step one, we're gonna drill into our LinkedIn, our Instagram, we're gonna find 20 to 50 people. How are we gonna decide which 20 to 50 people we want to talk to? What's gonna be our criteria? How are we gonna kind of work that through?

Daisy Ferns: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, first of all, if you've got more than 20 to 50 people to actually then whittle down, that's amazing. It's about knowing who your ideal client is though. So this kind of it almost so we're doing the lead generation, but actually there is a step before that, isn't there? Because for somebody like, like me, we offer done for you lead generation. And it's it's fairly expensive because we do it all for people. So actually somebody that's just starting out whose product is a 35 pound membership, for example, we're not necessarily going to be for them right now. So drilling down into who your ideal client is and knowing perhaps what business they're in, what job title they have, how long they've been in business. And these things are quite easy to find out on somewhere like LinkedIn. That's my new favorite platform, by the way. ⁓ And then you can actually start to have a look through your connections and perhaps whittle it down and start those conversations. And actually, if you speak to 50 people, when you're starting the conversations, when you're asking the questions, perhaps only 25 of them will be your kind of ideal client. But you've got to actually talk to people, you've got to know who your ideal client is in order to work that out.

Phil Davenport: I love it. Okay, so step one build ideal client profile because that's pretty vital step two Look for 20 to 50 of those people within LinkedIn Instagram wherever we are Step three, how do I build because I remember when I first spoke to Haley I just sent her over a contract and said do you fancy signing this and she said who are you Phil and we ran a ground so step three, how do we start building those questions or how do we get because I

Daisy Ferns: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Davenport: I feel it's really tricky to go in loosey goosey and say, hey, how's 2027 looking for you? As opposed to, hey, how many stuff have you got? What should you know? How much do you turn over? How do we, how do we bridge that? And what's the best format to do it? Is it email LinkedIn? Is it a phone call?

Daisy Ferns: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think it depends on where you feel most comfortable, where your ideal client is hanging out. So again, if we talk about LinkedIn, I wouldn't recommend just randomly sending a load of connection requests and cold messages because that is the fastest way to turn somebody away, isn't it? And I don't know about you too, but I get so many like, hey, how are you? This is who I am. This is what I offer. Do you want to jump on a quick call? And that I'm just like, no, don't know anything about you. You've not asked anything about me. No, thank you. So I think it's about building a relationship first and foremost. And some people hate that because it's like, no, I want a client now. You have to put the work in first, don't you? And sometimes you might have, and I'm not a fan of the kind of copy and paste scripted messages, but you might have like a rough question or two that you ask people to start off and you kind of you start with that and you can use a lot of data as well. And you can think, okay, I'm asking these kind of questions, but nobody's replying. You've got to then think, okay, that's not me. People don't like these questions. Maybe I'll ask something else and try that instead. So we can look at the data. Of course, everybody's a person, but if we are sending 20 messages and we're getting nothing back, we've got to think that, okay, there's something there in my messaging that's not right. But why wouldn't you just go in then, Phil? I'm gonna flip this around to you and say, why wouldn't you then just go in and say, how's 27 or 2026 or Q2 or whatever shaping up for you?

Phil Davenport: I found that when I did that, a lot of people responded. And then I just got absolutely overwhelmed with it. I started sending 10 a day and then people responded. And then that was, I was hoping that they wouldn't respond to the thing.

Daisy Ferns: There you go. Right. Yeah. You're like the anti-Legend aren't you? complete opposite of Legion. Please don't respond I'm doing this because I feel like I have to but please don't respond to me. So that, there you go then. So that first straight away, as soon as you said that I'm thinking that that's very you, isn't it? And that's the kind of thing that you would ask, you would say to a mate, know, how's your Easter weekend been, whatever. ⁓ And that is exactly what you should say then. And then when you start chatting, you can ask what's your business.

Phil Davenport: You

Daisy Ferns: And most people will then say, okay, what's your business? And you then start to introduce what it is you do. So I might say to somebody, so we might have that conversation. And I might say to somebody, where do your leads come from? Out of interest. And you just kind of have a bit of a flow of how you would like that conversation to go. And it doesn't always go like that because people are humans.

Phil Davenport: So step one, ideal customer profile. Step two, we've got our 20 to 50 people that we're gonna message. Step three, we send them a relatively generic message or do we dip into the profile and try and have a little tickle if you will.

Daisy Ferns: I I would. I'd always try and use people's names, even if I can't find anything to say, I might even say something along the lines of, love those colours in your branding, just so that people can see that, again, I'm a real person, I'm not a robot AI type thing, and that I have actually had a look at what they're doing and something about them. Or you can say, I love... that post that you put about whatever, or you can say, how's that project going or something, because you're a human and it's about that human connection. It's not just copy and paste scripted. So yeah, wouldn't, I mean, there's gonna be an element of generic to it because you know, how many greetings can you come up with? Probably not 50 unique ones, but if you're trying to look into people and be personable, then you can find a way to do that.

Hayley Baxter: Thank Do we have a step four?

Daisy Ferns: I would say step four then is to keep the conversation going. So ask thoughtful questions. what I really, really would advise people not to do is if somebody says, ⁓ I'm interested in your thing is don't just drop the sales page or don't just drop your link and say, let's book a call. Here's my link. Because then you've kind of put the ball in their court and you've you've kind of lost control of that by his journey, essentially. It's like, what did I say to you yesterday, Haley? I said, right. when are you free in May? These dates kind of thing. I didn't just say here's my link, book something in. Again, it's more human, isn't it? If I'm doing it for you or if we're having the conversation back and forth, you're leading somebody down that buyer's journey. And people, in my experience anyway, like that you are doing that. You don't come across as wishy washy as well.

Phil Davenport: I that, think we've got it. I think we've got the four steps to securing the... ⁓ the fifth! Here we go! Close the deal!

Daisy Ferns: Well, there's five, there's actually five. There's a fifth one. I've got this whole formula to it, Phil. I've got a whole formula. The fifth one is to follow up with people as well. So if people don't respond to you, that's fine. But don't just always think it's because they're not interested. People are busy. People forget. People need time to process. People. So actually just asking if people have got any questions, giving people a little nudge, little reminder.

Hayley Baxter: Yep.

Daisy Ferns: It's important to do that as part of the service as well. It's not that you're being pushy or anything, you're doing it as part of the service so they know what to expect as well working with you going forwards. So you go five steps.

Hayley Baxter: And it's a good, I have a live example of this. So Phil and I started doing a bit of a what one thing implementation a couple of weeks ago where part of what we were doing was ⁓ reaching out to people and following up on old conversations was one of the things that we had to do. And I did this. And it's probably over 12 months ago that I had a discovery call with this particular person and

Daisy Ferns: Okay. And I eat it.

Hayley Baxter: I followed up with her again and then she came back quite quickly and then nothing. So I did it again and then now we've got a call book next week. So it might not go anywhere, but she's the person that runs a really interesting business. So I'm just really looking forward to having a conversation with her and a catch up about, she's done amazing things in her business. So I'm more interested in that than anything else, but it just goes to show that it does work. So Daisy.

Daisy Ferns: Yeah? It really does.

Hayley Baxter: People want to get in touch with you. How do they do that? Where do they find you? And what kind of business owners are you looking to work with?

Daisy Ferns: So I am absolutely loving LinkedIn at the moment. So come and find me on LinkedIn, Daisy Ferns or Instagram as well. I am Daisy Ferns. ⁓ We work with more established business owners, founders. I mean, you know, I've got tips and tricks for everybody to come along and put into place. But if you're looking to outsource lead generation, typically we're looking for more established business owners, usually with a service of around a thousand pound plus. but always open, like you, Hayley, always open to conversations with people and talking to people.

Hayley Baxter: Thank you very much for joining us, Daisy.

Daisy Ferns: Thank you for having me.