In today’s episode of the Social Selling Show, Daniel and Will share tips on how to handle haters on LinkedIn, deal with negative comments, and differentiate between trolls and positive criticism.

Resources:

The Daily Sales LinkedIn Page

The Million Pound LinkedIn Message by Daniel Disney

Transcript

Will Barron:

This episode of the show is brought to you from the salesman.org HubSpot studio. Welcome to the Social Selling Show with myself, Will Barron, founder over at salesman.org and the king of social selling, Daniel Disney. Daniel, how is it going?

 

Daniel Disney:

It is going very well, Will, as always busy trying to help the world use LinkedIn for the better and excited for today’s subject. I think today’s one, certainly not one I see being discussed on many podcasts or many video content streams going out there, but I think it’s a really important topic that’s going to connect with a lot of people. So, yeah, excited for today’s subject.

 

Will Barron:

For sure. And do you know what? I’ve just ruined it now, but we’re getting better on the show because you just teed that up perfectly for me to tell the audience that we’re going to dive into dealing with haters and trolls on LinkedIn, and perhaps we can cover social media more generally as well. So, I apologise, I just ruined the perfect tee up to talk about the topic. But I feel like the connection, the conversation is getting better and better every episode. And with that, Daniel, let me ask you this mate, let’s start with an anecdote, perhaps, have you ever experienced a hater, a troll on LinkedIn, that really made you go, “Oh, crap,” and made you second guess yourself? Or are you just so thick skinned that this doesn’t affect you whatsoever?

 

Daniel Disney:

Good question, Will. I have been trolled a lot over the years and a lot when I started using LinkedIn, seven, eight years ago. The first couple of years was probably the worst for trolling. When you’re really being more active, reaching more people, getting more engagement, that tends to be where more trolls come out of the woodwork. In terms of a reaction, I have a layer of thick skin, but I’m still a human. So, I’m pretty good at dealing with it, not letting it get to me deep down, but it doesn’t stop it having an impact. And it was last year, for the first time ever, I actually blocked someone who took trolling way too far, but yeah, water off a duck’s back to an extent, but that doesn’t stop it having an impact.

 

Daniel’s Experience with Haters and Trolls on LinkedIn · [00:56] 

 

Will Barron:

Sure. So, we’ll touch on perhaps how, because I’m the same as you, I feel like I’m relatively thick-skinned here, but we could perhaps touch on how we could develop a thick skin. And if you work in sales, you’re probably thicker skinned than most, at the outset. I’ve only blocked one person for trolling or being a hater. I’ve blocked many people for just spamming me. Some of the audience may know this, because we did a show years ago now, covering some of what we’re going to cover here on the Salesman podcast. And it was a guy, he was a sales trainer. I’ll just say it, because the audience will know … You’ll be able to find him. He’s not got a big audience, but he’s a Sandler sales trainer. And he just, for some reason, just tried to rinse me.

 

Will Barron:

Now, I like a bit of banter. I like going back and forth. And I was also on holiday in Rome,