Listen: https://storysellinglab.co.uk/story-systems/08-the-conversation-partner/
About eight or nine years ago, I began work for a marketing agency as a hired gun copywriter. The agency used to sell clients on this marketing package. They included various elements: a lead magnet, a landing page, a video script, and about six emails that went out after people opted in for the lead magnet. My job was to write those emails.
This was really a first for me. Before that time, I'd been more of an ads manager, at least commercially. I'd done copywriting for myself. I'd done copywriting for clients as part of other projects, but I'd never been paid to just churn out words at scale, to work on headlines, to work on hooks, to do all of the things that you read about in the copywriting books. It was also a first for me because it was the first time that I didn't have any control over the client selection process, which provided a mixed bag. It was also a first because I did not have any direct interaction usually with the clients. Client would be brought on board, the introduction call and the information gathering conversation would be done by someone else at the agency who was on the books full-time. I'd be passed that recording and told this is the client, this is the website, this is the brief, and this is the recording of the 90-minute or two-hour conversation that we had with them as part of the onboarding process.
I remember that arrangement quite distinctly now because it made me realise that the person having the conversation with the client didn't necessarily have to be the person writing the words. I'd always assumed that the copywriter was also the information gatherer, which makes sense because if you're writing the words, to really get clear on the big idea and get a feeling and understanding for the emotion that you're trying to create with the words or with the outputs. It doesn't have to be words, it could be video for instance. I'd always assumed that it was really a requirement for the copywriter to speak to the business owner.
But this proved that didn't always hold true as long as the person having the conversation was highly skilled at the initial onboarding interview.
The reason the arrangement with the agency worked was because the recordings that I was passed were actually quite good quality. The person doing the interview had more or less asked all of the things that I might have asked. No two interviewers will ever ask the same questions or will ever probe in the same way. But listening through it at the time, it was quite clear that this person did this quite a lot for quite a lot of clients and was quite used to gathering the information that the copywriter would then need to produce the various assets that were included with the package.
Since then, I believe that the importance of the person capturing that - in my terminology, what I call the conversation partner - has changed. I've called it an interview so far, which I have to catch myself with because for the clients and for the business owner, it should feel like a conversation, not an interview. I call the role of the person having that conversation, gathering all of the stories, gathering all of the information that's going to form the marketing output, the conversation partner. I believe in the years since - that was eight or nine years ago, before the AI revolution - it's quite possible now that I wouldn't have been hired today as a hired gun copywriter because the role of the copywriter has also changed due to AI, which is something that we'll cover in an upcoming episode.
I believe that the importance of the conversation partner has gone up because the conversation partner provides the human elements, the human interaction with the clients that is impossible to automate or delegate to AI. Yes, I've seen people try to create a series of ChatGPT prompts that they can send to the clients and the client speaks to an audio recorder and answers the questions, but it's not the same as having a conversation. You cannot replicate the human contact. Because AI can't do it, the importance of it, the strategic importance of it has gone up. I believe that the conversation partner is one of the most undervalued roles in the entire Story Systems process. The role of the copywriter - the copywriter being the assembler of words - used to be one of the most important roles and in some respects still is, but again, we'll cover this in an episode coming up. The role of the copywriter has definitely changed in the last, even in the last two years.
We're going to dig in more to the role of the conversation partner today and explore what makes a good conversation partner. Can anyone be a conversation partner? Should the conversation partner in fact also be the copywriter or can it just be someone who's good at conversations? As always, we're going to cover three ideas. Those ideas are listening, destination, and recording. Let's go and have a look at the first idea.
Since my time writing copy for the ad agency, I've become much more involved in podcasting. Podcasting really is a growth area of marketing. Has been for a few years. There's pretty much now podcasts about every topic you can possibly imagine. I happen to think that if you're an expert at what you do and you don't have either a podcast or a book or both, it's debatable whether you really are the expert that you claim that you are.
But in doing more podcasting, I've gained more experience in the conversation partner role. Because in podcasting, that role of interviewing the clients and pulling together the raw material that is literally going to form the initial body of outputs for the episodes that we create has been my role in all of the podcasting projects that I've done over the last few years. I've gained a little bit more experience on it and have a bit more to say on the nature of what makes a good conversation partner. I've also been interviewed by other people and you really get a feel for what makes a good interviewer - what makes a good interviewer de facto then makes a good conversation partner. We'll talk a bit more about the difference between an interviewer and a conversation partner in due course.
I've spoken to a few interviewers who were acting as conversation partners and felt that they spoke too much. One of the bits of feedback that I get if I'm the conversation partner for clients and we're using that conversation to launch a podcast is that it feels like Rob - being me - it feels like I didn't actually say very much. I just listened intently. I made notes as we went. I guided the conversation. I was coming prepared, but I don't originally stick to the outline. As you're listening, it's knowing when to interrupt the business owner or the person that you're speaking to and knowing when to really drill down into the topic some more. Because often when the business owner settles into the conversation and they realise it's not an interview, it's a two-way chat and you are giving a little bit.
Often as they settle in, they'll tend to skip over stories that matter. The stories that matter may be the more painful ones sometimes. Perhaps aren't so easily or readily told.
The art of the conversation partner is to make the business owner feel as comfortable as possible to create an environment where they forget that they're having this business conversation. They forget that they're assembling copy material or they forget that they're launching a podcast and that they're speaking to the listener. They should stop speaking to the listener and start speaking to you as the conversation partner. It's a conversation one-on-one between you and them. The podcast listener is listening in on that conversation.
That's what your task is as the conversation partner. It's quite a subtle task. It also requires speaking a little bit, but not too much.
When I'm doing these conversations with people, I will share a few of my own anecdotes and give a little bit of input. I'm not a passive listening partner who's just making notes and asking questions. I do give into the conversation and I'll offer analogies and summaries and say, well that sounds like this, or have you thought about it this way? I try to ask interesting thoughtful questions but you want to make sure that what you're asking doesn't in any way hog the limelight. This has been the issue that I've noticed when I've been interviewed for some other podcasts. I'm not going to name names because everyone's got a different purpose for their podcasts and different interview styles but if you look at the transcript afterwards and if you've asked a question and that question has gone on for like three or four sentences. It's like a Russell Brand type question where the question goes on for about a minute. That doesn't really help because you've taken the limelight away.
If you're going to create a pie chart of it, I would say that as a listener, in the conversation partner role, as a listener, you probably want to be listening 90% of the time and then spend 10% of the time not just speaking to make noise, not just speaking to blow air, not just speaking to demonstrate how much research you've done, but speaking to really add to the conversation, speaking to share a little bit of yourself in those moments as well because sharing a little bit of yourself and your reaction to what the person that you're speaking to is saying reinforces that it's a conversation and not an interview. It's an exchange of information. Whereas an interview is really one-way - the balance is much more weighted towards the business owner in an interview.
That's why I'm adamant, or militant actually, about calling it a conversation and not an interview.
But the first thing that you need as a conversation partner then is to understand that balance of yes, you're going to have to contribute. Yes, you're going to speak a bit, but you really want to focus on nailing down those generous, interested, thoughtful questions as we go. You need to be an active listener. One of the ways that you can do that is to take notes as you go. In all of these conversations, I have a notepad handy. I will usually scrawl notes as we go that are barely legible. If it's on a lined notepad, often the notes aren't even on the lines. I'm just scrawling them sideways as we go because I'm trying to maintain eye contact. I'm trying to maintain that connection with the person that I'm speaking to. I'm also making notes of things that they mentioned that I might want to ask them about or thoughts that have come up for me that have prompted questions that I might revisit when a sensible moment in the conversation pops up.
I'll also usually have one or two reserve questions. If the conversation does run dry, I've got a new avenue of discussion lined up. I've always got a fallback question lined up. This is one of the reasons to - yes, you can completely wing these conversations and come in unprepared. But I usually do a little bit of research just so I've got something to fall back to. Because if you end up falling back into this awkward silence, you break the connection. Suddenly the conversation is not a conversation, suddenly the conversation is an interview and you lose the magic of the conversation. It's good to have those reserve questions up your sleeve, just in case.
That was the first idea - listening and in particular active listening. There's a lot you can read online about active listening, but I basically think that we're all poor active listeners. I'm actually much better at active listening on a podcast interview or podcast conversation. There we go. I'm catching myself again. I'm actually much better at active listening on a podcast conversation than I am when I'm speaking to my kids. That's something that I try to work on. I think this is something that you do have to work on. I do think that the notes really help.
The second idea then is that of having a destination to the conversation. This really ties back to the question of, can anyone be a conversation partner? Because the person having these conversations, as we demonstrated with the ad agency that I told you about at the start of the episode, the person doing these conversations doesn't have to in any way be responsible for the final output. This is about gathering the inputs so that the people or the AI or whatever is doing it has the raw material to create great authentic output. Because without the raw material, you're really just pulling words out of thin air. There's more than enough of that going on in the world. What we're trying to do here on Story Systems is create signal where you broadcast your true authentic genius to the world. That requires you to pull together the raw material first, which is why this process has to happen before any writing can happen or any podcast editing or any video editing or whatever it is that you're doing with the conversations.
Can anyone be a conversation partner? Potentially, but what the person doing these conversations needs to understand is they need to understand the destination of what we're trying to eventually achieve with the output.
If I'm having a conversation with a business owner, with a view to launching a podcast, I will make sure that I ask some very specific questions during the course of that conversation. I won't let them get off the phone or the Riverside chat or whatever it is that we're doing. I won't let them leave until they've answered certain questions. Often those questions are things to do with what's your vision for the podcast? What transformation would you like a podcast listener to go through having listened to the first 20, 30 episodes? How are they going to be different at the end of those episodes? I nearly always ask - those conversations, those are like the money shot questions. Before that, I'm happy to go down rabbit holes and if it turns out that the person I'm speaking to loves cricket and cricket was actually the inspiration for how they started their business and whatever the rabbit hole is, I'm happy to indulge plenty of rabbit holes in the main conversation. But we cannot end the conversation without getting the money shot of like, well, what is the point that we're trying to get to in the end?
You can't ask these questions at the start. You have to ask these questions towards the end of the conversation. Because if you ask them at the start, again, it catches the person that you're speaking to off guard and it breaks the magic of the conversation. You never want to break the magic of the conversation. You can't open up the conversation and then put them right on the spot and say, right, what's the outcome someone's going to have in 30 episodes time?
That's something that you really have to prep them for, lay the groundwork. You could ask it in a way where you reference something that has already come up in the conversation. I might ask them in a way where I say something like, for a listener of the podcast in 30 episodes time, what is the transformation that they're going to have been through? Because it sounds like it might be this. That might be my understanding based on what I have gleaned from the conversation so far. Sometimes their answer will then go one or two ways. They'll either tell me the answer that they probably prepared because this is one of the questions I send them in advance - what's the transformation of the podcast going to be? They'll either give me that answer or they'll sometimes go, you know what, I hadn't thought of it that way. That's actually better than what I prepared. You come out of it with a level of output that is higher than what you would have got if you just stuck to the questions and demanded answers because you've given into the conversation. You said, oh, it sounds like this might be the thing. You started to zero in on the big idea, acting as a guide in the conversation as much as anything. You can only do all of this if you know where you're trying to get to. Start conversations with the end in mind and make sure that you don't leave the conversation without capturing what you need.
The third idea then is recording. I feel like this should go without saying in some regards, but I'm going to say it anyway because it is your job as the conversation partner to make sure you've captured and recorded everything that you need. The role of recording has changed a bit in the last few years because automatic transcripts have become much, much better. I try to do all of my conversations on Riverside. Riverside, once you've got - I don't know what the paid levels are - on one of the paid levels, which isn't high finance by any stretch, on one of the paid levels it will spit out an automatic transcript of everything that has been discussed. You can then also search that transcript in the tool. If you made a note of something that they talked about that was particularly interesting, you can then look that up and then just copy and paste that section of transcript out of the recording afterwards.
I think recording has become much better, much easier with a view to creating written output. This has been one of the main changes since I first started the Story Copywriter podcast - well, four years ago now. This has been one of the main changes where for the vast majority of people, having a conversation-driven approach to your marketing is the most sensible way to go. Talking it through first and then creating the written output out of the transcripts of those conversations is easier for most people because anyone, as long as they've got a great conversation partner, anyone can have a conversation. Not many people can write great copy or fewer people at least can write great copy.
You also need to make it as easy as possible for the business owner to be recorded. If they're most comfortable having a phone call, then you need to find a way to speak to them on the phone and record that conversation. I've done that with clients and employers in the past. I've worked with one employer and I was really the voice of the business. I used to speak to the business owner whose name was on the emails. I was capturing his voice and he would ring me up and talk to me about all of these things and I realised very quickly that I needed to record those conversations so I got a call recorder app on my phone and just started recording conversations. That's fine as long as you're not publishing the recording. I think it's better practice, I think it's better karma to tell them that you're recording, just so everyone knows. There's no actual reason that you need to broadcast the fact that you're recording a call if it's just being used for your own private notes.
Make it your business to record the conversations that you need. The other thing that I did with that business owner was I made sure that we had a conversation on the calendar every - I forget now, because it was a few years ago - it was at least every two weeks. It may have been every week where we had a 9am chat where he would just phone me up and talk to me about things that were going on in the marketplace and things that he'd done, places that they were going to go, things that had cropped up. He was fairly convinced that all of this was obvious stuff and run-of-the-mill things. I was like, thank goodness we are having this conversation. Thank goodness I'm recording it because you've just written all of the emails. You've just provided all of the raw materials, all of the emails that I need to write over the next week. Those calls were really a lifesaver. This guy was an extremely busy guy. This guy was a multimillionaire, ran multiple businesses, quite hard to get hold of in fact. Having that weekly or at least fortnightly conversation with him to power all of the marketing that would go out with his name on was really a lifesaver. Because again, at the times where we skipped those conversations, I'd have to fall back to channelling my inner client, which was never as good as channelling the real thing.
Another thing that's changed about recording, and this relates to you if you're the conversation partner, is to record in as high quality as possible. Yes, you can record on your phone. If you're meeting someone in person, you can get a recorder app and just place your phone on the table. There's actually quite a big payoff to even just investing a little bit of money in tech.
If you're going to be doing a lot of online conversations, switch to something like Riverside instead of using Zoom, because Zoom compresses the audio quality quite a bit. Invest a little bit of money in a mic. You don't have to spend £500 on a fancy podcasting mic, but even just spending say 50 pounds or dollars on a decent condenser mic is going to give you quite a big uptick in quality. I also try to get the person that I'm speaking to - even if they're recording on AirPods and things like that - it's something that, especially for podcasting, drives our audio editor mad when people record on AirPods. But we try to optimise their recording setting and try to get them recording in a room that has plenty of sound cushioning where it's not this big echoey room and just make small optimisations to their setup. Record in as high quality as possible, primarily on audio, but then also on video as well. If you can get them to have decent lighting, if they're going to be doing a lot of video, then it probably makes sense to invest in a more expensive 4K webcam. I happen to use the Logitech Brio for some of my calls. That's a great option. Just, if you're going to be doing a lot of these things, and if there is at least a possibility that you might want to create a YouTube channel or a podcast, having these conversations recorded in higher quality opens up more possibilities for how you might use them in the future. Don't feel like you have to show up at the BBC with half a mobile recording studio, but just there is an 80-20 benefit. There is a big step up in quality from just a few small things and paying attention to audio quality and then video quality in terms of lighting and things like that.
We're at the end of this episode, so let's do a bit of a recap. The conversation partner is a relatively new role in all of the various roles that I have in the Story Systems process. It's a role that's always existed, but it's become much more critical in the last two or three years, as it's become easier and easier to switch to a conversation-first approach to marketing and content generation. The conversation partner's role is to help effortlessly extract the stories and content needed for all authentic marketing communications.
The three ideas that we've discussed were listening, destination and recording. Listening - the idea being that you want to spend 90% of your time listening and 10% of your time probing and asking great questions that really contribute to the conversation and really making it a conversation and not an interview. Destination in terms of having a very clear idea of what you're planning to do with the outputs of the conversation. Recording - firstly making sure that you are recording but then recording in as high quality as possible to open up the possibilities of a multi-channel approach later on.
I do believe that anyone can be a conversation partner with practice. I mean, after all, if I can do it, then so can you. I don't think I'm natively cut out as a conversation partner. If you met me outside of this, you might be surprised that this is one of the main things that I do for my clients. I'm not an especially chatty person. I actually think it works in my favour as a conversation partner that I'm not an especially chatty person. That I do really try hard to listen. Those are the main traits that you want. You want someone who primarily is curious, interested and cares and can really work on the active listening elements. Yeah, again, if I can do it, so can you, but you need to work on the listening parts.
The conversation partner is a role in its own right, in our lexicon of roles in the Story Systems world. It's often not a separate job. When you're looking at these things commercially, it's quite likely for commercial reasons. If you're the business owner, it's probably unlikely that you're going to pay someone just to have conversations with you. It's more likely that the person having the conversation would also then be doing something else. Whether they're the copywriter, whether they're the podcast editor, perhaps. Whether they're doing another role in the business.
I think that the conversation partner is a highly valuable role, but it's often underappreciated. For that reason, in most projects commercially, the person doing the conversations might also be doing something else in the process. One of the things that they might be doing then is analysing the conversations. Actually the role of the conversation partner has actually split in two. You've got the person having the conversations and then the person analysing the conversations and deciding, well, which part of the conversation are we going to use for which items and marketing outputs and how are we going to stitch everything together? Those are completely different. That's like a left brain, right brain thing. I happen to be a bit of a two-headed monster because I actually think I'm a better conversation analyst than I am a conversation partner, but I can do both. However, I know more conversation partners who can only do the conversation part and definitely should not be responsible for the analysis. What makes a good conversation analyst? Well, we'll talk about that on the next episode.
Well, in running news, I completed a 20-kilometre trail run on Sunday, last Sunday, so I'm recording on Wednesday. On Sunday, I ran a run called the Round Sheffield Run, which follows a 15-mile route around the perimeter of Sheffield, across parks and countryside basically. It's a staged run, it's 11 stages with walks in between the stages. It's one of the best runs I've ever done actually. If you're into running and you happen to live anywhere near Sheffield, then send me a message because I do it every year when I'm not injured. It's a really beautiful run. But with any story though, what's the interesting fact? Where's the drama? Where's the downside? Well, the drama is that on the very last stage, I'd just climbed the biggest hill. I'd just conquered the biggest hill. I'd got to the top. From here it was all plain sailing downhill to the finish. I took a wrong turn. I ran about two minutes down this road. Then suddenly I'm like, shit, where's all the runners gone? I stop and there's a guy, because it's a sunny day and there's a guy out in his garden doing the gardening. I say, excuse me, pal, do you know where the Round Sheffield route is? He goes, "Hey, you what?" So I have to explain again. This is a timed run and the clock is ticking so I have to explain to me. He goes, "It's..." and then he advises me to go back the way I've come. I'm like, "No, no, I'm not going that way. I'm going the other way." He goes, "Right, yeah, you need to go over there." So I have to retrace my steps and I'm knackered at this point because I've run - I've already run about 13 miles. I have to run that two minutes back to rejoin the point where quite obviously all the different runners are crossing the road, going through a gate into a park. That was the thing that I messed up. That was the downside. It probably cost me about 2 to 4 minutes of my run. My run time was still pretty good. I got around in 1 hour 45 running time. I think it would have been closer to 1 hour 40. I've actually been really bothered about the time loss but when you reflect back on it, the only person that's really bothered about that is me. But yeah, it's good to take these things seriously and it's good to challenge yourself, but perhaps there is a lesson and a moral of the story. You know, it's also a good story that I got lost on the road.
Thanks for listening to this episode. I'll speak to you next time about the conversation analyst.
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