21 – Podcast guest booking without the back-and-forth

Hello there and welcome to PodcasterPlus, the podcast offering tips and tricks to simplify and automate your podcast. You can find all the episodes at podcasterplus.com/show.

So if you’ve been podcasting for more than a week, you’ve probably experienced the calendar dance. You know the one. You send an email to a potential guest, they reply three days later saying, Tuesday, uh, looks pretty good. You reply saying, Tuesday’s, great, but what time zone are you in? And they reply, oh, I’m sorry. I’m in New York. And so you reply, right? So that’s 4:00 PM my time, which I think is 11:00 AM your time. But then I think I might have a meeting. Anyway, you get what I’m talking about. But before you know it, you’ve sent 15 emails just to get one hour of podcasting on the books. It’s completely exhausting. It’s totally inefficient, and frankly, it’s a bit of a mood killer before the interview even starts.

So today I want to talk to you about how to stop the back and forth, and build a guest booking workflow that actually works. We’re going to cover outreach, pre-qualifying, and the tools that make this entire process frictionless. So as always, gonna divide it up into different sections.

And the first one is I’m going to illustrate the problem, which is the hidden cost of all this friction. The problem isn’t just the time spent typing the emails, it’s the mental load. Every open booking in your inbox is a tiny task taking up space in your brain. When you make it hard for a guest to book, you’re also subtly telling them that your show might be a bit of a mess. High caliber guests, the ones that you really want are busy. They value their time. So if you send them messy, open-ended emails, they’re less likely to say yes, because they can already smell the logistical headache coming their way.

So the next section is the why you outreach. The first step to better workflows is your outreach. Most people send far too much information in the first email. They send a five paragraph essay with their entire life story. Don’t do that. Keep it snappy and simple.

The first email should just answer three things. Why them? Why your show? And what is the next step? Use a template, but customize the why them part, so it doesn’t look like a mail merge. Mention a specific project of theirs or point to something that they did recently, perhaps a blog post.

So the next section, pre-qualifying without the pain. One of the biggest mistakes that I see is booking a guest and then asking for their bio, headshot, social links and all of that. It’s more back and forth. Instead you need a pre-qualifying system. When somebody expresses interest, that’s when you send them to a simple intake form.

Ask the questions that matter. For example, what’s the one thing that you want my audience to walk away with? Do you have a professional microphone? What’s your preferred bio and headshot? By getting this upfront, you’re not just saving time later, you’re ensuring the guest is actually a good fit for the episode.

So the next section is the frictionless choice. Now for the calendar dance killer, the scheduling link. I know some people think that it’s a bit impersonal to send a link, but I promise you your guests will thank you for it. Tools like Calendly, SavvyCal and PodcasterPlus, allow the guests to see your real time availability, in their time zone, and pick the slot that works for them. No maths, no time zone conversions. No is Wednesday still good?

This is exactly why we’re building PodcasterPlus. We wanted a system that doesn’t just give you a link, but handles the entire briefing process automatically. It sends the calendar invite, it attaches the technical briefing documents. It collects the guest info all in one go. Because at the end of the day, we want you to focus on the conversation, not on all the silly logistics.

Okay, next step, the ready to send templates. So you have your templates ready. You should have a folder, or a snippet tool, with three specific emails.

The first one, the invitation, short and personalized.

Number two, the yes, here’s my link, directing them to your booking form or calendar.

And the third one, the reminder. Perhaps set 24 hours before the recording time, including the link to the recording studio.

When you have all of these ready to go, booking a guest goes from a 30 minute chore to a 30 second task. Hooray.

So in conclusion. Your guest’s experience starts long before the microphone is turned on. By removing the friction from the booking process, you are showing up like a pro, and you’re giving yourself the space to actually prepare for a great interview.

There’s loads of templates for these kind of things lying around on the internet, but it’s probably best, rather than copy and pasting something, that you have a look at what other people have done and make your own. And if you’re looking for a way to automate this entire workflow, keep an eye out for what we are doing over at PodcasterPlus.com.

So there you go. That’s what I’ve got for you this time around. Thank you very much for tuning to the PodcasterPlus podcast. Remember to check out the show notes for links and resources mentioned in this episode at podcastaplus.com/show.

And we will see you next time for some more tips and tricks to simplify and automate your podcast.