Episode Transcript
Adam O'Leary (00:01.262)
If you're a business owner struggling with a marketing strategy that feels frustrating, expensive, and feels like you're on a hamster wheel, then our guest, Devin Sizemore, is about to give you a simple win that you can implement today. Devin Sizemore is a business strategist and connection builder who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs expand their network and revenue. He's a strategic growth consultant, author of the Connection Expansion Book,
and creator of the connection expansion system, a proven repeatable strategy for generating consistent inbound connections at scale. Devin, a big welcome to the show. So excited to have you here.
Devin Sizemore (00:44.702)
Man, looking forward to a great way to start the week. Thanks for having me.
Adam O'Leary (00:48.342)
Absolutely and Devon, I've heard you discuss how shifting from a sales focused mindset to a connection based approach can transform lead generation. Why is building genuine relationships more effective than traditional sales tactics for business owners?
Devin Sizemore (01:05.728)
Man, I love this question. I love that we just get to get into it. I just posted on a webinar I'm hosting and the tagline is stop selling, start connecting. And so it goes to this theory that when we approach networking meetings, coffee meetings, first meetings, or any meeting, and our goal is only to sell, we walk into that room with a lot of assumptions and a very limited focus, right? Is this person qualified in this time to buy my product? Do they have a challenge? Can I solve the problem? That's it.
When we take that off the table and we look at the person, go, look, let's just connect. What happens is we open up the conversation to, do they have access to podcasts? What doors can they open? Referrals are they doing? What groups are they in? Where can they invite me? Who can they refer? Like, how can we collaborate? Could we do an integrated offer? Like, it allows you to really look at the big picture and get creative in how can we form a relationship where we both win, we're both impacting our ideal clients in the world.
But it allows you to win every meeting instead of this idea that like I go to a meeting, I either close a deal or don't, that's the meeting. there's so much more opportunity, yet most people, and especially in the marketing and sales world, are just driving to this prospect with the hopes of driving close rates. That's what we're trying to shift is like, let's approach these with a bigger mentality.
Adam O'Leary (02:24.888)
Man, I love this. was literally just having a conversation about that with somebody this morning. So I'm so glad you're talking about this. And one of the things that I was talking about this morning was networking events. Okay. I've been literally invited to probably four or five different conferences that are happening in the next four months. And, and so I guess a question I'd have for you is how do you go about engaging at these types of networking events and how are you focused more on
building rapport rather than just chasing prospects and throwing business cards around.
Devin Sizemore (03:01.258)
Yeah, so one of our core principles is control what you can control. And I think it relates well to this question. With this question, I want to gamify my approach to this event so that I win, right? So first I want to show up super positive and congratulate myself for showing up. Because for many people watching and listening, that's a big effort. Once you're in the room, again, we're not targeting prospects. Our goal is to meet as many people as we can and get their contact information. I really need people to hear me on this.
you are responsible for getting other people's contact information and data because then you can control the follow-up. So you show up. You control getting the information. You control the follow-up. That's the control that you can control. Now, how you're going to engage in conversations and where, that greatly depends on the type of event you're at. If it's a five-day mastermind, you might have more time and depth of conversation. If it's a quick hit in-person networking event or a virtual networking event, again,
very different demographics. And in some of those, they limit what you can talk about and how. So your goal in any of situations is meet people, get their contact data so that you can win at the follow-up game. That's really the goal. A couple of things I'll tell you that make it easier is your tagline or elevator pitch. I think people overcomplicate these, and I think they get very convoluted. People need to know who you serve and how you serve them. That's it.
That's the clear goal. I need to very clearly understand, Joe, you do this and you serve these people. Great. Right now we both understand how we're playing. The other thing I would say is if you have a really high ticket offer, which I see a lot of, and you have no low ticket offer, no free offer, no way to build bigger funnel, like you're probably going to struggle with this relationship building game because your only goal is to move people into this really high ticket offer. You've got to have a place for people to land. So a few different ideas and nuggets there for you guys.
Adam O'Leary (04:57.176)
That was fantastic. And I guess I think you know where I'm going with this. Let's say if we get somebody's contact information, what's next? How are we going to follow up with them?
Devin Sizemore (05:07.988)
Yeah, so I'll give you the exact script we use and all of these scripts are in our community. They're in my book. Like you can copy and paste and download all of them. But the script, I use this, Adam, it was so great connecting with you at the mastermind last weekend, right? Amber Spears just had four rooms last weekend. There were a ton of people there. It was great meeting you at the last event. I enjoyed learning about you and your business. I'd love to schedule a time to learn more about you and your business so that I can better make connections for you. Here's a link to my calendar so that we can get time scheduled. The follow-up message.
Clarity on where you met, clarity on the intention, and it has to be about the other person. And then please, we are in 2025 as of recording this, right? Include a calendar link, like make it easy. And that's the formula to follow up because our goal in following up is to not be pushy, not be salesy and book a meeting. In a meeting, we then can start building a relationship. We can identify if there's an opportunity to buy their product or sell yours or find paths forward or all these other things.
But if you can't even get into the meeting, none of that exists, right? So we have to change the language so that it makes it easy for people to get on our calendar. And then in that meeting, we can approach it differently and we can figure out where to go with the conversation.
Adam O'Leary (06:21.234)
And where are you going to? So let's say now we've had the initial conversation. Okay, and maybe it's talking about partnerships. Maybe it's talking about sales. Maybe it's talking about who knows what. But the next thing is how do you actually engage those and nurture those into long term relationships? Because once you've had that initial call, I already know what's going through some of our listeners minds is once they've had that initial call, like, what are you going to say next? I mean, are we just gonna
put them into our email newsletter? Are we going to send them random birthday messages? Like, what would you do, Devin?
Devin Sizemore (06:55.404)
Yeah, yeah, yes. And right. So yeah, do all of those things, right? Like you should nurture, you should put people on newsletters, you should give them little touches on their birthday or whatever it might be like those are all great. The real formula is this in the meeting, don't miss the opportunity to sell. So I really need people to hear me because we talk a lot about connections that I think they miss this moment. If you're in the meeting, and you've had a good conversation and they express that they have a challenge that you clearly can solve.
Adam O'Leary (06:59.054)
You
Devin Sizemore (07:24.062)
You must make the statement, Adam, what you just told me is this. What we do is this. Would it make sense for us to explore working together? You have to ask the question. And if they raise their hand or you ask the question and they say yes, then you move them into your sales process. Move them into your funnels, move them into the process to close a deal. That's option one. Option two is everybody else. And everybody else, this is how I follow up.
You're going to send a follow up email. Adam, great meeting with you. Here's a recap of what we talked about. Here's what I'm going to do for you. Here's what you're going to do for me based on our conversation. In that recap email, what I'm going to promise is I'm going to make a few connections for you because I'm going to teach you how to open doors because that's what I ultimately want from you. Maybe we're going to JV. Maybe we're going to create content. Maybe we're going to do some of these other things. Great. But the core thing I want you to understand is I'm going to add value to you by making connections because I took time to learn about you. I'm going to show you what that looks like. And then three weeks from now, I'm going to check in.
Hey, Adam, I have permission to check in. How are those three introductions? Give me some feedback. You're going to give me feedback, typically feedbacks be like, oh my God, they're amazing humans. That was great. Thank you. What can I do for you? Fantastic. Now we're opening up a relationship where you can ask, right? Hey, thanks for asking. What I'm looking for is connections to mastermind hosts, community leaders, whatever your ask is that's strategic, not to a prospect. And then what we do with all of our people is after that touch, so we have the 24 hour touch with connections. We have the three week check in.
And then we move everyone to a six week nurture cycle. I have people in my network who have received the email I'm going to tell you right now over a hundred times, like literally over a hundred times. And this is the email checking in. are you doing? Question mark. That's the subject line. Very straightforward. Hey Adam, it's been a while since we last connected. I hope you're doing well. Any new challenges, anything new and exciting, please let me know what connections I can make for you. I look for anything back from you. Some version of that, whatever version you want, obviously the exact templates and we provide, but
That's our check-in email. It's all about the other person, right? How are you? What's new and exciting? What are challenges? How can I help? What happens is people engage. Matter of fact, I woke up this morning to a bunch of those response emails today. And it's like, my God, it's so good to hear from you. Here's exactly what's going on in my world. Here's what I'm excited about. Here's what my challenges are. And now I'm equipped to have a real dialogue and add value and solve problems, right? Hey, let me make a connection for you. that's amazing. Let me promote whatever you just told me about.
Devin Sizemore (09:41.972)
And now we're furthering and nurturing that relationship on a one-to-one basis. But really it's at scale because your VA or your AI systems could do everything now.
Adam O'Leary (09:52.391)
awesome. Okay, super cool to kind of understand that process. And so one thing I know some people are going to be a little bit nervous about here is the concepts of partnerships or I'll promote you or something along those lines, because most businesses, especially service businesses, maybe have never done that before. So what are some simple wins or some quick ways that
a business owner could actually go ahead and maybe do a promotion or maybe make introductions, maybe do something, step out of their comfort zone and do something they haven't done before.
Devin Sizemore (10:28.618)
Yes, my first warning here is remember you're taking prospects off the table. So often we go into these conversations with this mentality that you're going to give me direct client referrals, I'm going to give you direct client referrals, we're both going to fail. That's really what happens in those situations, right? I'm going to list last with the goal of you closing deals, you're going to list the last with the deal close. Like we're both set up to fail, right?
And so what I like to do is I really like to understand how, like, what is your goal? Like, what are you trying to accomplish? Right? Who are you targeting? Who do you serve? What's your funnel? How do you get people engaged? Right? You're going to have the same question about me. And then we want to talk about where our strengths lie, because maybe the person you're talking to has no drive to want to speak, right? They don't want to do any public speaking or content creation. Okay. Well, inviting them onto your podcast or a stage or creating content together, that's useless. Right.
Or maybe it's vice versa. Maybe the person you're talking to is like, I love creating content. You have a group of people. I'd love to come and just add value to your group by doing this amazing webinar specifically for them. Great. Right now you're bringing amazing content to their world. Right. And in turn, they're exposing their people to you. Right. So you both win. You don't actually have to reciprocate and feel like, my God, I have to bring you into my world to present. No, no, no. You coming into their world adds value. Right.
That's the value you're bringing. So look at the value equation and make sure that both parties are actually delivering. And don't get scared if someone's like, well, we only work with people with huge email lists. Great. I don't have a huge email list or maybe I do, but I don't want to do blasts. Great. How else could we collaborate? Right. Can I promote you in another way? Could I invite you to co-host something with me? Could I invite you into my mastermind? Could we do an integrated offer?
And again, with prospects off the table, maybe we talk about strategic partners. Who are your best referral partners? How do you communicate with them? Great. Could we bring all of our referral partners together and show them how both our services combined could be super valuable? Really what I'm trying to do here is I want you to get creative. There is no wrong answer. Have clear communication with the other party and figure out how can we both play and win together while impacting strategic partners, clients, or each other's worlds, communities, members.
Devin Sizemore (12:44.608)
Whatever that might.
Adam O'Leary (12:46.817)
I love this. And I guess for somebody who's just wants to get started and maybe is considering making connections or trying to use this warmer approach, what is a simple win that they could do right now in order to get a quick win for themselves?
Devin Sizemore (13:05.354)
Yeah, the quick one is everyone right now has your biggest partner and biggest opportunity already you're in contact with them. 100 % guaranteed, already in your current network, your phone, your CRM, your social media, you already have a person. What you need to do is you need to book meetings with those people. So go look and figure out who you haven't talked to in a while that you think is just an absolute rock star. Get back in a meeting with them with this intention of having dialogue to open doors for them.
and find ways to collaborate, not to sell them anything and not to buy whatever they're going to position. Now they might show up like that. Hey, I'm here to close Devin because Devin reached out. Great. We can disarm that and then have a conversation. Just get your network re-engaged without a sale on the table. It really starts to open things up. And that's where you get crazy opportunities. Just booked tickets, right, to Orlando to speak at an event that came from a friend of a friend whose mastermind I spoke at.
Well, why did that happen? Because we were having a random conversation and he's like, I'm speaking at this event. I'm like, that's amazing. Like who's in the room? dude, they need you. Boom, boom, boom. We're booked, right? Like just book the meetings, but stop selling when you get into it.
Adam O'Leary (14:16.961)
Very cool. And give me an example of a result that you've seen from implementing this. Like I know that you've talked about this, but for other clients that you've worked with, what sort of results have you seen from them and where should people go to learn more about you?
Devin Sizemore (14:32.204)
Yeah, 100%. I have a bunch of what if statements in the book and I like to kind of tease these in very different directions. So, you know, what if you could land a job with no interview, right? So if you're in a career change, what if you could just find the perfect career without having to do the resume game? What if you could land a vacation at a fraction of the cost or no cost, right? Cause you get invited, plugged in. What if you get up in masterminds or rooms that you don't belong in, but you're invited in? What if you close that next deal, the next stage, the results are all of the above, right?
seven-figure deals, partnerships, stage opportunities, new friends, inner circles, mentorships, traveling, discounted vacation, like all of the above happens when you have a large network that actually likes you, right? That's the result. So if you want to learn more, go to devinsizemore.com, D-E-V-I-N, sizethenmore.com. You can click the ACES tab to check out our school community. It's totally free. Come hang out with us. My book's there. You can get a free copy of that as well. And whatever else you need, just poke around the website. It's there.
Adam O'Leary (15:30.465)
Devin, you're amazing. Thank you so much for jumping on today.
Devin Sizemore (15:34.912)
Thanks, man. Hopefully there's a nugget there.
Adam O'Leary (15:37.536)
Absolutely, we'll sign off for now. Have a wonderful rest of your day and looking forward to seeing you on the next episode of Simple Wins.
