The Salesman.com Podcast

On this week in sales we’ll be looking at; research showing what buyers top 10 deal makers and deal breakers are, Ford partnering with Salesforce to make a uber CRM, laying 900 people off with a Zoom call and much more!

Korn Ferry research – Top 10 deal makers and deal breakers

Top deal maker –  “Understood my business needs”

Top deal breaker – “Did not understand me or my business”

https://i.marketingprofs.com/assets/images/daily-data-point/071221-kornferry-deal-lg.jpg

Ford Motor drives into CRM services for America's SMBs with Salesforce in the passenger seat

With the automotive industry looking to diversify its sources of revenue, Ford Motor Co has teamed up with Salesforce to launch VIIZR, a CRM and field service tool targeted at meeting the needs of small business owners in the US.

VIIZR is a custom solution built on Salesforce Field Service that Ford says will “help tradespeople schedule field appointments, send invoices and manage customer relationships from one integrated, cloud-based platform”.

It’s been developed by Ford Pro, the dedicated commercial arm division of Ford Motor that was set up earlier this year with a brief to focus on vehicles, technology and services for the commercial vehicle sector and increase fleet productivity, improve uptime and lower operating costs through connected services and work-ready internal combustion and battery electric vehicles.

https://diginomica.com/ford-motor-drives-crm-services-americas-smbs-salesforce-passenger-seat

Gartner Eyes Declining Mobile Opt-Out Rates

The opt-out rate for mobile app tracking will decline from 85 percent now to 60 percent by 2023 as consumers gain experience with untargeted ads, Gartner predicted in a recent report.

https://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/CRM-Featured-Articles/Gartner-Eyes-Declining-Mobile-Opt-Out-Rates–150466.aspx

Connect the Dots collects $15M Series A to help companies graph connections

A former Salesforce executive wants to make it easier to find those connections, and he’s building Connect the Dots, a startup that aims to build a personalized, professional relationship graph.

The way it works is you sign up and it scans any email accounts you have, looking for connections at different companies. It collects and correlates this data. When you look at a particular company, you can see who you know who knows someone there, with the strength of your connection measured by three colored dots. If they’re all green, it’s a solid connection and you can request an email introduction.

Drew Sechrist, who was employee 36 at Salesforce in 1999, believes that email is the key connector. “We’ve got these emails that have been piling up forever representing relationships. And we just didn’t have any way to pull [them together] and get value out of them. But technology was getting to the point with machine learning and some other advanced techniques [that] we could extract value from that data and then build a graph of relationships to see who actually knows who,”

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/07/connect-the-dots-collects-15m-series-a-to-help-companies-graph-connections/?guccounter=1

Well-known estate agency sales trainer suspends courses indefinitely

After 33 years, well-known industry trainer Adam Walker has announced that he will not be running any more training courses.

More than 150,000 people have attended Walker’s training courses since 1987, but he has decided to suspend them indefinitely owed in part to Covid-19.

He continued: “The first obviously is the pandemic. Covid has changed the sales and management training market for ever. For several months, it was illegal to run a training course. It is now possible to run one but demand for traditional training is only a fraction of what it was before. The majority of training is now delivered online but I simply do not believe that it is possible to achieve the same results from a virtual course. I simply do not want to run courses that are less effective than the ones that I ran before, and so I have decided reluctantly to stop running training courses altogether.”

https://propertyindustryeye.com/well-known-estate-agency-trainer-suspends-courses-indefinitely-after-33-years/

Downing Street Christmas party 

A source who had attended the alleged gatherings on 18 December in No 10 told us there'd been “several dozen” people in attendance, with food, drink and even party games on offer, with the event, however it was described, going on past midnight.

It was only the next day, the 19 December, that Boris Johnson tightened Covid rules still further, “cancelling Christmas”.

This is all during a period where the rest of the UK was under lockdown.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59500512

The post The Top 10 Deal Makers And Deal Breakers? Sacking 900 People Over Zoom? appeared first on Salesman.com.

In today’s episode of the Social Selling Show, Daniel and Will share tips on how to increase visibility on LinkedIn as well as pros and cons of riding trends on LinkedIn.

Will Barron:

Welcome to the Social Selling Show with myself, Will Barron, founder of Salesman.org, and the king, the freaking… I'm going to bash the table right now. I'm going to boom the microphone and make all weird noises for everyone listening on audio, the king of social selling, Daniel Disney, how's it going?

Daniel Disney:

It is going very well. Appreciate the table booming introduction. I'm excited for today's episode, Will. For anyone who's watching the video of this you'll see, I am now in day two of my brand new office. So quite an exciting time, although a lot of work now to do, to build this up.

Will Barron:

I'm interested, we'll get into the topic, which is how to become more visible on LinkedIn in a second, but for anyone who's watching this who is creating content and might be interested, what are your plans? Are you just going to replicate the studio that you built at home here, or do you have bigger, smaller, different plans moving forward?

Daniel Disney:

Do you know what, Will? Honestly, it took so much effort and thinking, and building in the home office setup, which has got four bookshelves and a lot of other stuff. I'm not going to replicate that, but I'm going to use this as an opportunity to create real branded video space. So I'm looking at some wall art and just make it suitable really good audio and video equipment to take the video game to the next level. So yeah, quite a lot of homework to do in preparation. But it's exciting. It's an exciting step. And actually tying this in and looping straight into today's topic when we talk about being more visible on LinkedIn, yesterday I posted a picture of me holding the keys, standing in the doorway to the new office and the post did above average engagement.

Daniel Disney:

And I was sort of aware of the principle, but those momentous occasions are great opportunities to become more visible. Those moments and it could be the birth of a child, it could be a child's birthday, it could be your birthday, it could be starting a new job. Those big occasions make great sort of extra visibility posts on LinkedIn. So I guess kicking this episode off and using this as an example, look for those moments where you think, actually this is something a bit different and they may happen once, twice, three times a year, but those are great opportunities to get that extra visibility.

Will Barron:

Do you think that is because it is a moment and people are sharing in that moment with you? Or is it because you're actually being real and you're not just, not you personally, but people are just so used to the day in business content and re sharing blog posts from your company blog and then they see something that is out of that world and something that is a… Someone pregnant, baby, marriage, whatever it is, new, amazing office space that it's so real that that grabs attention in the platform. Is it because it's just, people are buying into you, I guess it's the same question people buying into or is it just because it is different?

Daniel Disney:

It's both and I think there's a key thing. You can't have momentous occasions every single day. So people have that big occasion, they get lots of engagement and they try and repeat the same thing every single day and it's not going to happen and that's fine. You'll have a handful of these across a year. It is partly the occasion. People want to join in and celebrate and follow that journey. But that ties into the fact that yes, because it is personal insights, people connect with it. Again, on the flip side, you can't just share that type of content or otherwise people won't know what you do. Won't build trust and credibility with you and it won't generate any sales. So it's good to have it in a balanced… A balance where you can't just do that. But the occasion just adds, I guess, the amplification.

Will Barron:

Sure. So let's go back to basics here for a second. Clearly with social selling to drive leads, to get attention for our product or service to make some money. We're not doing this… We're not David Dobrik, we're not getting paid on ad views on YouTube. It doesn't matter if we get… I'd rather have 10 people consume a piece of content and get five prospects, than a million and nobody gives a shit about it, right? So with that said, is there a balance between content that perhaps nudges the algorithm in our direction that we should create versus contents that drives leads, which is perhaps the bread and butter? Is there a ratio between these two opposing forces that we need to both drive the LinkedIn algorithm, drive attention our way, but also pull leads from the system as well.

Daniel Disney:

So I guess we've talked about this in a previous session, the 80/20 split is what I have always preached. In terms of 80% should be value giving and 20% can be advertising. Now, if we take that 80% and break it into 50 and 30, 30% can be more personal based stuff. So about you, the selfies, the snapshots into your world, where then 50% should be more still value giving industry relevant, you sharing your industry stories, experience, tips, knowledge, et cetera, but it is done in a professional way, but it is good to have that 20, 30% where it is you and your stuff and it could be you at work, it could be you outside of work. It's letting people get to know you. That digital relationship is super valuable and it can accelerate the sales process significantly.

Daniel Disney:

Because those first conversations you have with them, in their head, it's not the first conversation. They feel like they know you already and that's a very powerful thing for sales. But it's getting that balance right/ build the personal side up, make sure you're earning the credibility and then you still have that 20% to do… Promote and advertise what you sell. So that you are able to drive those conversions.

Will Barron:

Sure. Okay. So I want to get into consistency. I think that's an easy one to get into and I've found, you'll be proud of me Daniel, I've started using a software product called Meet Edgar, and it allows you to just schedule content. Which has then forced me, because I see this empty calendar in the software, to go, “Right. I need to actually create some content for LinkedIn.” And everywhere else as well. The same content goes out on our business Facebook profile on Instagram, few other places as well. But having that empty calendar in front of me has forced me to create some content and just posting whatever it is. It's not even the best stuff we've ever produced, every day has led to almost every day the posts are doing between 1,000 and 10,000 views a post. And it's not that I've reinvented the wheel. It's not that I've come up with some amazing concept.

Will Barron:

I've not done anything. In fact, the content isn't even that good compared to what we do when we spend more time on it. But just that constant tap, tap, tap, tap, tap every day, these 1,000, 2,000, 1,000, 3,000 view posts have made a massive difference to the amount of leads that we're generating from LinkedIn. Now I know you told me to do this 27 years ago and it's the fundamentals. We've talked about it on the show, but how important is not even being the best, just being consistent if we want to become more visible on LinkedIn?

Daniel Disney:

It's just crucial Will, let's be completely honest. You could go to a networking event every single week for a year. If you stand in the corner and don't say anything, you're not going to hear any conversations, any opportunities. But if you go in and you talk to people, guess what? Even if what you're talking about is low value, low quality, they'll remember you, they will get to know you. And at some point they will understand what it is you do and that's how you convert. Consistency is super important and that's a good point to make. You don't have to go out there sharing viral content every day to generate leads.

Daniel Disney:

You can go in and you could average 10 to 30 likes on a post and maybe a few hundred impressions. You can do that consistently and generate opportunities. So don't be disheartened by fear of, “Oh, I'm not getting 1,000, 10,000 views.” Or “My posts aren't going viral.” It doesn't mean you won't create opportunities. A lot of the real sales people out there on the front line, their averages are lower, but their consistency creates conversion.

Will Barron:

For sure. I love this analogy. Because if you think about it, all the amazing conversations you've ever had in your life with the people that you care the most about that you got the most rapport with. Well, they probably came six months to five years, 20 years into the relationship. If you think back to the first conversations you had with them, you probably can't even remember them because they were that boring. So that's a perfect analogy. Is there anything else we need to do other than let people into our real world? Celebrate our wins? So when I don't do enough of, and I've been told off on the Salesman Podcast a bunch of times by a bunch of people for not celebrate my wins. Celebrate the wins, be real, be consistent. What else do we need to do to become more visible?

Daniel Disney:

Have, and this is a tricky one, but be aware of the algorithm and look at what is working at any given point. So right now I'm sure you've seen this as well, Will.

Will Barron:

If you say polls, I'm sick of seeing polls. The front page… I did a poll the other day. It was just absolute trash, just out of interest. And it was like 500 people had filled in the poll and the question, which was just nonsense. I don't understand why these people have got so much time to be doing these polls in the first place, Daniel. But yeah, sorry I cut you off then because I knew where you were going. But literally the whole first page, first five, six are just these crappy polls on LinkedIn. It's rubbish. Obviously this is an over correction and LinkedIn will pull them back, but sorry mate. I'll let you finish.

Daniel Disney:

No, that was a good outburst. And there are a lot of people Will that feel just like you. What I will say no matter what the algorithm pushes, people will do it and other people will dislike the fact that there's so much of it on there. I get you're presented with a choice. You can sit and complain about it or use it to your advantage as you did because the algorithm is pushing it and it is an opportunity even if it lasts for a week, four weeks, eight weeks for you to gain extra visibility, generate extra followers, audience growth, and even potential customers.

Daniel Disney:

So riding that algorithm wave whilst it may annoy a percentage of people clearly… I mean, some of the people… I did a poll the other day on the daily sales and I think it was 7,000 votes. That's a lot of people that are putting time into voting on, obviously you're right. There are some really bad polls. Like what did you have for breakfast today is offering no benefit to anyone. But there are some polls that offer insights where you think, “Well, actually I'm…” I read polls and I think, “I want to know what everyone's voting for. I'm curious to know what the answer is.”

Will Barron:

Explain that phenomenon within the system that you've got to vote to see the results, right? So it's in inherently viral in that nature.

Daniel Disney:

It's very well created. So yes, to see the results, you have to vote, which as an author or creator of a poll, you want to create polls where people are going to want to know. In your industry and ideally your target customer, you're going to want them to think, I want to know what everyone else is thinking or doing or saying around that subject area, because for them to see it, they have to vote. More that vote, the more people that are then going to want to see and gets that spiral effect. So it was very cleverly designed by LinkedIn. You're absolutely right Will, the algorithm will probably push it for a little bit longer and then it will balance out and get the same engagement rate that any other post will.

Daniel Disney:

But we've had spikes like that consistently through LinkedIn history and as LinkedIn creator, if you're looking for visibility, look at what the algorithm's pushing. If you see text posts suddenly get huge numbers again, jump on that. If you see LinkedIn articles starting to get big numbers, start doing that. If there's a new feature that comes out, whether it's video live, whatever it may be, look at what people in your network are doing, what's getting the most traction because if the algorithm's pushing it, it's your opportunity to jump on that wave and get that extra visibility.

Will Barron:

How do we, without having a page like yours, which I think is 750,000 people on it right now, which is insane and congratulations. How do we see this, for us mere plebs at the bottom of LinkedIn food chain, right? We have a couple of thousand followers or a couple of hundred followers. Is it very, literally you just look at the LinkedIn feed and see the trends that are at the top of it, what LinkedIn are proactively pushing to you? Is it as simple as that?

Daniel Disney:

It is. My insights don't come from the daily sales. A lot of it'll come from to just connect with people in your industry, connect with influencers in your industry and people that are active and just scrolling through your feed. Five minutes, 10 minutes a day on a daily basis, you start to pick up the trends. You start to see which posts are getting the most traction, whether it's topics, whether it's structure. I mean, vulnerability is quite a popular topic at the moment. That's generating a lot of engagement for people opening up a little bit more. So there's things like that where again, there's nothing black and white. LinkedIn don't tell you what they're going to push, but you can just see through the results and it's the best way to learn. So just read through the feed and make sure your network has people that are ultimately going to show you those results.

Will Barron:

Are you familiar Daniel, with the term news hacking?

Daniel Disney:

No.

Will Barron:

So you you'll know this concept because I'm sure you're doing it and I think it's describing in a grander and wider sense what we're talking about on LinkedIn. So news hacking is this process and loads of companies have been built on the back of this of, for example, I feel like over the past few months, perhaps since the pandemic, mental health in sales and business has been a huge topic. So a traditional newspaper and magazine would run a bunch of stories on that and ride the wave of mental health in whatever it is.

Will Barron:

I feel like what you need to do the same, we need to news hack on LinkedIn, see what the topics are, see what the features are, see what LinkedIn's pushing feature wise and then just… I don't know how to describe this without being slightly derogatory of just hammer it into the ground or just do whatever the topic is over and over and over until we didn't have that juice anymore. So I said like the Huffington Post is built on news hacking. All these tech startup and news organisations from the Buzzfeed was news hacking, so I'm guessing we need to do something similar on LinkedIn, right?

Daniel Disney:

I'm with you will, and I think whilst we talk about riding the wave and capitalising on the opportunity, you've also got to be very weary of overdoing it. So yes, LinkedIn polls a great right now. Would I say, go and do a poll every single day? Absolutely not because you can easily alienate your audience and push them away. So you've still got to find that right balance. You just want to make sure you do capitalise on it. So at the moment I'm sharing maybe one maximum two polls a week. I wouldn't want to push further than that, but I wouldn't want to ignore it either because I would miss out on an opportunity.

Will Barron:

How far do you lean into, and I guess the real question or the smarter question is what is the value of having eyeballs, right? How far do you lean into, for example, a poll? So let me formulate this more intelligently. Is the value in creating a poll that, you know will go viral or you hope that will go viral that will get 10,000 random people to view profile is the value in that, in that the LinkedIn algorithm goes, “Hey, this gets tonnes of attention. We'll start sharing more of the content more generally.” Or is it always worth creating content for a specific audience? And LinkedIn goes, “Hey, this is the audience that this person's after. So even if I get less views, it'll be more targeted.” If that makes sense.

Daniel Disney:

You do always want to make sure it's relevant. So again, doing really generic, bland polls, even though they might generate extra engagement, it's going to dilute your personal brand and LinkedIn will ultimately end up connecting you with the wrong type of people. So you want to make sure it's always relevant. And there are two benefits to a LinkedIn poll. Yes, there's the visibility, there's the views, but you can convert within it. So I've been selling tickets to master classes. I've been driving registrations to webinars just by promoting something in the text above it. Again, not every single time. Sometimes it's good just for the exposure other times, you can sell and promote through it as well. The beauty being they're getting value from the post and you're still able to then direct them and say, “Have you checked out the Salesman Podcast? Here's a link.” You get lots of click throughs and then the engagement pushes it even further. So I would definitely recommend making sure it's always targeted to your ideal audience or otherwise it's really hard to justify it.

Will Barron:

Sure. I totally agree. Unless you're building a media company, which essentially you and I are building an attention driving machine for sponsorships, for other stuff and there's value in that for individuals. Maybe that gets you your next job. Maybe it gives you a side hustle, but we focus on just generating revenue for the organisation that we're selling on behalf, makes total sense. Is there anything else Daniel, that we need to include in our mission to become more visible on LinkedIn?

Daniel Disney:

No, I guess the last closing thought really on the visibility piece is we've about lots of different things you can do to be visible and visibility is good, but you want to make sure you convert as much of that visibility. So be smart in how you share your content. Whether it's a poll, whether it's a photo, whether it's a big occasion, think about the subtle things you can include. So when I did this post yesterday, taking a selfie in the office, talking about how it was exciting day for me to have my first office. Within that post I talked about what I'm going to do here, which includes LinkedIn training and keynote speaking and so I'm subtly talking and essentially promoting what I do, but it's in a… It's wrapped in a post that's marked as a big occasion and, and done in a way that's going to be valuable to the audience.

Daniel Disney:

Do the same with polls, do the same with any form of content. I've seen a lot of influencers follow this route, use these opportunities for visibility. But if you want to convert that visibility, you need to make sure they know and understand and see on a consistent basis, what it is you do. That's how you convert the backend. Visibility is hollow if you're not going to get something on the outside of it.

Will Barron:

So is it fair to say that there has to be a point to the post?

Daniel Disney:

Yeah. And your audience are going to want that as well. Again, just following your journey and getting to know you and like you and being excited by random stuff is great. But, and that's fine if again, like you say, Will, if you're building a media company or if you just want the ego stroke, but chances are most salespeople listening will hopefully want some leads and customers off the back end of it. So there has to be consistency in what you do, your industry, your product, your service, your mission, all those things need to be wrapped in that consistent piece. So yes, push for the visibility, share the personal stuff, make sure you try and find ways to sew it in. I mean, Will here's another example. I took a selfie of me in my garden cooking a barbecue, nice insight outside of work post. But the text said after a busy week of LinkedIn training, nice to cook my family some barbecue. So it's there. It's there wrapped in, not noticeable, not in your face, but it's there. So we always look at those little ways because it makes a huge difference.

Will Barron:

I've got one final question for you, Daniel and this is probably a topic for a whole podcast so we don't need to go too in depth into this, right? But as you say this, a lot of salespeople will spending a lot of time on LinkedIn, but what happens if we have an audience, if we have influence if we've got other social media accounts outside the LinkedIn bubble. Is the value, and I can give you an example of YouTube here in a second, but is the value in driving traffic from outside of the LinkedIn platform to the content on LinkedIn, does LinkedIn reward you for doing that? And I'll just give a wider context of if you take someone who's not viewing YouTube, is not on YouTube, right now dot com, and you take them onto YouTube and they start watching your video then another video and another video.

Will Barron:

YouTube massively, the algorithm promotes your content on the back of that. Because you're taking someone who's not doing anything to do with YouTube and then throwing a load of adverts in front of them over time, right? So YouTube, it goes out of their way to reward content creators who are embedding videos on their own websites or whatever it is or linking via websites to specific YouTube videos. Does LinkedIn have any system in place that rewards us for taking traffic attention, whatever it is from even the real world. Having, I know people don't really have business cards, but having LinkedIn on your business card or stuff like this. Does LinkedIn reward us for pushing traffic to the platform?

Daniel Disney:

So they don't at the moment Will and I think we should maybe make the next episode about this because there are a few little insights I can share that have happened quite recently within LinkedIn. Changes that will probably work towards that type of process. So no, right now there is no massive reward system built into the algorithm or into the analytics there to push it but they're heading that way and it is something we should definitely explore in a bit more depth because the creator community is something that's probably the next big wave on LinkedIn.

Will Barron:

Cool. I'm physically writing this down because we'll record it at some in the future. We'll tease it with that. So with that anything else to wrap up on Daniel? Or is that, is that the end of this one?

Daniel Disney:

No, go out there. Share great content, open up your personal stories, try and gain that extra visibility. Just always make sure it's relevant.

Will Barron:

Amazing stuff that was Daniel Disney, the king of social selling, my name is Will Barron founder of Salesman.org and that was the Social Selling Show and I will speak with you again next week.

Daniel Disney:

See you next time.

The post Increase Your Visibility: How to Get Prospects Attention On LinkedIn appeared first on Salesman.com.

In this week’s episode of the Social Selling Show, Will and Daniel talk about nurturing buyers through social selling and LinkedIn after they've made a purchase.

Will Barron:

This episode of the show is brought to you from the Salesman.org HubSpot Studio. Welcome to the Social Selling Show, myself, Will Barron, founder of Salesman.org, and the King of Social Selling, Daniel Disney. How's it going, mate?

Daniel Disney:

It is going really well, Will, excited to be back today. And yeah, we've got quite a good interesting topic today. Another one of those unique ones that you don't see people talking about it on LinkedIn, it's not something you see a lot of people writing about, but it's a really important part of the process that I think a lot of people forget or ignore.

Will Barron:

It's the least sexy thing we're ever going to talk about on the show that might make you the most money. And on today's episode we're going to talk about how you can nurture your buyers via social selling, via social media, after they've made a purchase. And we'll start with this, I think we're going to be relatively aligned on this question, Daniel, but why do we need to nurture our buyers after the first sale has taken place?

Daniel Disney:

Well, hopefully, Will, the people watching and listening to this are long term invested in their customers and not just looking for that quick sale. Which we know, I mean unfortunately, a lot of the bad stereotypes of salespeople are the ones that are trying to get anyone and everyone to buy from them, and they're only focused on that individual sale. Hopefully the people watching and listening to this are looking beyond that, which is why it's important, because one customer in itself can create so many more opportunities, whether it's buying again in a year's time, whether it's buying additional items, whether it's connecting you with other departments to sell additional items, and then you've got referrals. So yeah, an individual customer has a tonne of opportunity, as long as you look past them as just an individual customer.

Will Barron:

So you've done all the hard work, you've done all the stressful work, you've done all the research, you've done that initial building of trust, why would you just let all that go to S and just not leverage it on the backend to do more deals? And we're going to see this in most marketplaces, as everyone moves to a subscription model. I can't think of an industry that isn't moving towards a subscription model versus an upfront capital payment. As all that shifts, everyone's commissions are going to shift towards, get so much in month one, it's going to sound almost like a multi-level marketing scheme at some point. You get so much in month one, so much in month six, then so much in 18 months. And so it's going to make total sense, eventually, for everyone to adopt this idea of selling once, and then either upselling via price increases, which happen naturally and organically, upselling and cross-selling different products within the space.

Will Barron:

And then, something that I don't think we've done a show on, but we should definitely cover, getting referrals as well. So a buyer buys from you, you give them value, hopefully the amount of value that you promised, you've exchanged that for the cash, the capital that they've shared with you. You nurture them a little bit longer, and then if you've done a good job, they're going to be happy to promote you internally, as you said, Daniel, within other departments, within other offices perhaps, if it's a large enough organisation, but then also within their little peer groups as well. So we'll definitely do a show on referrals in the not to distant future.

Will Barron:

So that's the why we should do this, and hopefully people are sold on this idea, and you should be sold on it because tough shit, you're going to have to do this as everyone moves to this subscription model. But how do we do it? Is it the same for process? Is nurturing from contact to close the same as nurturing from close to next close? Or do we need a different strategy?

Daniel Disney:

They're similar, Will, but they are different, you're going through a different process when you're taking someone from prospecting through to close, and then it is a slightly different process, but they involve a lot of the same activities. We've covered this in a lot of the episodes, the whole process of giving value through your content, building your personal brand. And what's amazing about LinkedIn and Social Selling is you do that beyond the sale, and we go away from, what I'm sure you and I both remember from our sales experiences, maybe once every three, six, 12 months, phoning up your customers, “Hey, Will, how's it going? How's the product? How's everything? Great. Do you want to buy anything else? No. All right. I'll give you another call in three months, six months, 12 months,” whatever it may be.

Daniel Disney:

And you flip that round to almost, potentially, daily interaction. When you're sharing content of value, when you're interacting in their content, you're creating a conversation on a much more regular basis. So when you do decide to have more deeper conversations, it's not out of the blue, it's not after an extended period of time, there's been things happening in between that, and that helps elevate it and sometimes create even more opportunities.

Will Barron:

So we've never touched on this before, and I've never pondered on it too much because all our social efforts at Salesman.org, we only have one product, we don't have a follow-on product, that's a flaw in our business model. But most companies, especially if they're hiring sales teams, and hiring larger teams, will have multiple products that go over the cycle of a customer journey. How do we prioritise our content on the daily that we're posting? Should it be 100% new customers? Should it be new customers, customer success stories, and then upselling opportunities like 33/33/33? How do we schedule our content out when we know that via LinkedIn, let's say we're a year or two into the social selling process, so we've got lots of customers who have purchased from us already within our ecosystem, let's make that assumption. What should the split be between the content? Or do we need to even go that in depth into it?

Daniel Disney:

The only answer to that question, Will, is going to be, it depends on what your priorities are, what your targets are. So if you an SDR and your priority is purely new customers, new prospects, then your focus should be on content that's going to generate that. But if you're an AE and you're looking after accounts, whilst also hopefully prospecting for new ones, then you need to determine that split. But you're absolutely right, that is an awareness piece people should be thinking about. Depending on what your targets are, make sure your content reflects that. So if it is maybe a 50/50, or a 30/30/30 split, then make sure that is reflected in your content. You have content going out designed to generate new business, you have content going out designed to nurture and give value to your existing customers, and then you have content going out to maybe expand or upsell or cross sell into new products as well. So yeah, it purely is dependent on what your targets are.

Will Barron:

We don't need to go so in depth. I can't remember the chap's name, it's going to come to me, I interviewed him on Salesman podcast a little while back. And he's done tonnes and tonnes, his company has done tonnes of research, on the upselling process. He's going to, if he ever watches this, he'll slap me over the head when he sees me, on the back of it, because we went super into depth of this upselling process. And I'll give the analogy, and I'll come back to the company and his name in a second, if not, I'll leave it in the show notes. But what he described was, we've got to be careful when upselling, because when you get someone through the sales process, they've gone through probably quite a bit of pain. The pain levels are up here, because the problem they have, they've probably gone through maybe even more pain to get the problem solved on the promise that the pain levels are going to drop dramatically after the sales process.

Will Barron:

So now we've got to be careful, because if we say, “Well, hey, you've been through this process. If you go through a little bit more pain, we can give you this.” Then they go, “Well, you're just bringing me pain, over and over and over. You're not really solving things.” This is where we get into these internet scam, get rich quick schemes, where you go, “Well, I'll pay you 50 quid for this,” and I get onto a webinar. “And then I've got to pay 200 quid for this, and then I've got to pay five grand to get to a live event.” And eventually I'm going to get, or Scientology, and a whole bunch of different religions all kind of follow on the same premise here, you get past one barrier, and there's multiple to go through.

Will Barron:

And he talked about this idea of the buyer, once they've made a purchase, they've got this big weight of, “We don't want to change,” sat on top of them again. And so we've got to be careful because as soon as we lift that weight of, “I don't want to change,” our competitors can go in and they go, “Well, okay, the game's up here. We can move around. We can reinvestigate the original deal, and see if the competitors of the products have changed, the market has moved, and we can perhaps get a better deal than we did originally.”

Will Barron:

So we talked about this idea, this big weight being set on top of the buyer and you got to be careful of when you lift it. So with all that said, Daniel, what kind of content should we be creating where we're not telling the buyer that change is easy? What we're going to do essentially, I guess is, tell the buyer that change with us, now you've invested with us so far is easy, but change to goes to someone else, a competitor, that's going to be even more painful and you don't even want to investigate that. You want to just keep going down our own sales process, our own sales funnel. I know I've just thrown a lot at you there, but is there any content that we can create to upsell, at scale, I guess, via content marketing and via social selling?

Daniel Disney:

There is, and the key to it comes to storytelling, which is the skill salespeople tend to have, or should be investing in. And there's lots of storytelling sales courses out there separate to LinkedIn and Social Selling that you would do over the phone or via email. With LinkedIn, it's bringing storytelling and mixing it with creativity to find ways to share the things you do, to share some of those principles around the dangers or risks of going to a competitor without doing it directly. So it's finding ways to creating engaging content, or share stories, to help your customers see what you do and understand how simple it can be, how easy it can be, the benefits, the ROIs, et cetera, without directly telling them.

Daniel Disney:

And in terms of how you do that, there's just so many different ways. It could be through connecting it to a TV show, or a film that's come out. And finding a way, I mean, I saw someone do this with the Floyd Mayweather, Logan Paul fight, here are lessons relevant to the industry, connected to that fight. Totally separate subject, but what you do is you connect to people that probably watched that fight or had an interest in it, and then whilst they're reading it, they're learning about these things that you do in a kind of subliminal, but not aggressive subliminal way.

Will Barron:

Sure. There's a great book on that very topic of taking the news and turning it into content, called news hacking. It's super old, it was written in the 90's I think, but that's a great resource on that front. And I'll ask you in a second of any resources or structures to build stories, but one thing that I find salespeople who are slightly missing the mark on social tend to do, is that they make themselves the hero as opposed to the customer the hero in their stories.

Will Barron:

Which makes sense because we're all egocentric, we're all focusing on ourselves, it seems like a good idea to say, “Hey, I went this account, I did this, and I got their revenue up by 200%,” or whatever it was. “I cut costs, I saved them this pain, this litigation, this stress.” Whereas what the buyer wants to see is, people who were in their marketplace, their peers, you went in with a guide, but the actual individuals within the account, in the account itself, was the hero. So other than that, which is super high level, probably didn't help people that much as a story structure, have you read any books? Have you read any guides on building stories that you think would be useful for the audience?

Daniel Disney:

Similar to you, Will, I am terrible with names, so I can't remember. I think it's Mick Adam wrote a book about storytelling specifically for sales. It's a great book. He puts out a lot of great content, but what I liked about it is it was storytelling, focused on sales, which is so applicable to LinkedIn. All it encourages you to do is to tap in and understand how to tell good stories, doesn't matter where, which format you do that in. It's not designed for LinkedIn directly, but it's so transferable, so that's probably one of my favourites. The other one I'll mention, it's not a book about storytelling, but it's a book called, The Extremely Successful Salesman's Club, by Chris Murray. And simply because it is a beautiful story about sales, so reading it helps you understand how you can wrap something that perhaps wouldn't be in a story in a story.

Will Barron:

For sure. I'll link to some of the books in the show notes as well, that kind of go along these lines. You probably need to read one or two of them, or even better, is a better solution for this to follow yourself, Daniel, and then just copy your stories with a different context and different heroes? Should we model success so as opposed to go deep into the trenches and try and reinvent it, or create it from other people's structures?

Daniel Disney:

As much as I'm fully happy for people to follow what I do, what I would also recommend, on top of that, is follow key people in your industry. There will be people in your space, selling your products or services, or similar ones, and have a look at what they're doing, because they're going to be doing it a lot more relevant to your customers.

Will Barron:

Sure. Okay. Is there anything, I feel this is quite of a short episode, Daniel. Is there anything we need to add on this? Because I feel this is a short episode, we've been to the point, but it's still, I don't think we've dropped the hammer just how like important this is for the audience.

Daniel Disney:

I think one of the key points we haven't really touched upon, but is really important to focus on, is value. And that word is thrown around a lot of sales and social selling, but value is important. The value you give your prospects and customers on a long term basis determines the success of that long term relationship. So we can dig a little bit now into what value means, but that has to be a core focus of everything you do. So from the moment they sign on the dotted line, make sure you're connected on LinkedIn with them in the first place, then make sure you are sharing content that's going to be valuable to them. We talked about the various split, either way, make sure whatever content you share, they're going to get some value from. Maybe that's an insight into you and your journeys, they get to feel like they're following your process. Whether it's a story, insight, knowledge, whether you're getting experts in that are going to benefit them, all these things, that's giving value.

Daniel Disney:

When you do that on a regular basis, then match that with engaging in their content. If they're sharing content, like and comment on every other post, don't be too stalker-y and do every single post, but like and comment on it. It's going to make them feel good. And it's not only maintaining, but building and strengthening that relationship, so giving value through your content and engagement is a real big part of nurturing those long term relationships.

Will Barron:

Okay. So let's dive into the topic of value, because this is a topic in its own right. For someone who's just bought, the data suggests that the biggest thing, the most value you can give to them at that moment, is to reduce any buyer remorse. Especially within a large B2B account where perhaps one person has made the final decision on the back of multiple other people, nobody wants to look like a complete idiot if it all falls apart, so you really need to emphasise next steps. You're going to do this directly as opposed to social, but we'll come on to social a second. You want to emphasise next steps, make sure that everyone is on board with the process, and you want to report back as soon as you can, data on success, even if it's just, “Hey, the software is now set up, your users are in the account,” whatever it is. You want to report back success as quick as possible to reduce this window in this moment of potential buyer's remorse.

Will Barron:

And this goes back to this analogy of, you've got this big rock and you want to keep it on top of your customer, and I guess the rock at this point is a big rock value that you've delivered, and as soon as you start to lift it up, because you want to upsell them, you want to do a price increase, you want to do whatever, there's the opportunity for them to go to a competitor. So you want to increase the rock that's on top of them to keep them held in place, and make them satisfied with what they've bought.

Will Barron:

So with that said, how can we do that with social media and our contact in social? It seems like one opportunity is to post customer success stories, and almost have like once or twice a month, a seven day success story of someone goes from buy to success. And that obviously has to be relevant, it has to be a real testimonial case story, that's probably the hardest bit, to uncover those testimonials and get that written down and documented. But it seems like that is a starting point. Is there any other way, or a better question perhaps is, what else do buyers want in that window of purchase to 30 days? What value do they want that we can provide them, at scale, over social media?

Daniel Disney:

I guess there's two types of value, direct and indirect. The indirect, is, as you say, Will, is the content, it's the sharing customer success. And again, don't forget there's other additional bits of value you can deliver indirectly. So it could be, maybe once a week, you interview an expert and they're going to be able to watch it, read it, consume it and gain insights they can go and use. That's value.

Daniel Disney:

If you are working in sales, you get a sales author on, or you send them to sales leaders, you get a sales author on who's sharing some of their top tips. As a customer, I'm getting additional value to the products or service you've sold me, so that's great, that's indirect value. And again, that whole engagement interaction on LinkedIn pieces, indirect value that you give.

Daniel Disney:

If we look at the direct value, don't forget LinkedIn is a communication platform as well. So if you want to give them updates, or check up, you don't just have a phone, you don't just have an email. Why not ping them a video message on LinkedIn? Why not ping them an audio message? Or a written message? There are all these additional ways you can use it from a direct communication perspective to deliver value. It could be a video message, “Hey, we just want to let you know, we've got all your customers logged into the system now. Here are going to be the next steps.” Quick 30 second, 60 second video that they might consume, which they're going to get value from because it's interactive, but it's still that direct communication.

Will Barron:

I think we can get… We've gone from a short episode to a seven hour one now. I think we can get even more practical with this, if you have an account sign up and you've got a good relationship with them, you can probably ask them once a week, “Hey, what's the biggest problem?” Or once every three days, “What's the biggest problem you have right now? What's the biggest problem you have right now?” As perhaps the decision maker signs the contracts, there was this issue with the contract, so was this problem, there was this, document it. Then seven days later, our team, they're not so motivated to get on the product. We know that when we get them on there, they're going to do great, document that. 14 days later, our team are using the product, the end users, we're starting to see some benefits and now we're starting to get some motivation, but we found this, this and this.

Will Barron:

And we're not talking about product issues that would go to a product manager to get engineers to fix. What we're looking for is where we can create micro bits of content that might not be appropriate for you to ring up every three days and pester someone, but you could easily ping them a message on LinkedIn and say, “Hey, at this point, seven days after people sign up, people typically have one or two of these issues. Here's a quick video that solves these issues for you.”

Will Barron:

And it might be something that you don't want to clutter someone's inbox with, and you don't want it to be an automated marketing like message, we've all been through them, we have to click through the guide, and go through all this nonsense, when really we just want to get into the product itself. We can personalise it. We can do it from the competitive advantages that sales people have, in which case it is personalised and customised to an individual. And especially if we've just sold to them, we've built that relationship, we perhaps got some more context that a marketing team doesn't have.

Will Barron:

I feel like that framework, of just even a message once every three weeks until we see that first bit of results. In which case we want to formally document that, an email so that the buyer can then share that internally, so they look great in front of their colleagues, that we make them look like the hero. But informally, if we just ask a few of our customers, as they're going through this journey, we can perhaps collect data that gives us a reason to reach out, as opposed to, “Hey, I just thinking of you,” and just time sucking calls and emails and texts like that. I feel like if we do this once or twice, we've probably got a really good framework to reach out over social over the next 30/60/90 days.

Daniel Disney:

Really do, I mean, it's genius, Will, but again, it's understanding some people are either more likely to respond, or prefer to get communication via things like a video or an audio message. As you say, some people don't have time to answer your calls, some people's inboxes are absolutely jammed, and they're going to miss those emails that you send them. But actually that little voice note that comes through, or that video message that comes through on LinkedIn, might capture their attention, and it's that whole principle of actually communicating with them in the way that they prefer to be communicated with. And I guess the whole moral of this episode is, it's deeper parts of LinkedIn and Social Selling that a lot of sales teams, salespeople, don't think about. They kind of think, “I can only use LinkedIn for prospecting, so that's all I'm going to use it for.” And there are so many more ways you can use it outside of different parts of the sales process, and it's just realising it's more the than a simple tool.

Will Barron:

Well, I've seen this, well, I don't want to plug it, but I've seen this with our training product at Salesman.org. We've got a community in there, there's tonnes of people chatting, going back and forth every day. Regularly, I'll get people message me on LinkedIn, because they know that I'm crappy at replying on email, it's common knowledge of email me, I'll probably get back to you in a month. But they drop me a message on LinkedIn, and as soon as I recognise their name, as a customer of mine, a part of the community, I'll respond immediately on LinkedIn. And there's perhaps questions that they don't want to ask in the community, but they want to ask me personally. And maybe they just like LinkedIn as opposed to our platform, because they're logged in it all day, they don't want to log into another piece of software. So you're right, we've got to flex our communication platforms for where our customers want to communicate. And that in itself, even if it's the same communication that we're doing, that's an extra layer of value that we can offer these people as well.

Daniel Disney:

100%, Will, 100%, and that is it, going back to the whole value bit. It's mirroring what your customers want, whether it's in the content, whether it's in the way you communicate, and LinkedIn creates all these opportunities. So as soon as you've got that customer, LinkedIn doesn't stop, there are so many ways you can use it to just communicate, beyond the phone and email. You can give value through the content you shared by engaging in their content, and all these things are going to help nurture, grow and make these relationships stronger, longer lasting. And LinkedIn's continually growing, so more and more people are using it, for more and more hours per day, so it's becoming a big part of not just prospecting, but beyond the sale as well.

Will Barron:

For sure. Okay. Well, we'll wrap things up with that. That is Daniel Disney, King of Social Selling. My name is Will Barron, I'm the founder over at Salesman.org. And with that, we'll speak with you next week on the Social Selling Show.

Daniel Disney:

See you next time.

The post How To Nurture B2B Buyers On Social Media appeared first on Salesman.com.

On this week in sales we’ll be looking at; Gong unveiling all the products, guided selling, B2B buyers having cold feet and much more!

Gong Unveils Centralized Platform for Revenue Teams

Company launches the Gong Reality Platform™ including new products and ecosystem integrations to drive productivity and effectiveness for revenue professionals

Gong today previewed new products and ecosystem integrations that solidify its status as the platform for revenue teams. The company will introduce new products in 2022 including Gong Assist™ for increased productivity through automated task management and Reality-Based Forecasting for more streamlined forecasting. Gong also introduced Gong Collective™ for more robust insights based on data from other critical revenue systems.

These moves come as the Gong Reality Platform™ – which captures and analyzes customer interactions and makes recommendations based on those interactions – continues to improve the performance of customer-facing teams.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gong-unveils-centralized-platform-revenue-140000919.html?guccounter=1

Category Leader Klue Raises $62M to Accelerate its Competitive Enablement Platform

Klue, the AI-powered competitive enablement platform, today announced a U.S. $62 million Series B investment.

Companies are being disrupted faster and competition is increasing across every category. Yet today, many companies rely on a slow, inefficient, and inaccurate process of collecting and delivering market insights.

Klue shapes how enterprise leaders think about competitive enablement, helping collect and curate intelligence from multiple sources (external and internal to the organization) and presenting organized, actionable insights that sales, product, strategy and marketing teams use to win business against their competition.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/category-leader-klue-raises-62m-to-accelerate-its-competitive-enablement-platform-301434600.html

B2B firms are getting cold feet on buying decisions

Business-to-business (B2B) organizations are getting cold feet when it comes to buying decisions as a result of the pandemic, new data suggests.

According to a report from sales enablement platform Showpad, 46 percent of B2B buyers have paused their buying decisions since March last year, while 43 percent deprioritized them.

“In 2020 the shift towards remote selling was a huge upheaval for many B2B sellers and their organizations. Teams had to pivot immediately to a completely new type of buyer and implement new sales approaches which rely on the use of digital technologies,” said Dustin Deno, Senior Vice President of Global Sales at Showpad.

“This new buyer profile has persisted throughout 2021, with buyers increasingly intolerant of cold outreach and requiring relevant, comprehensive information fast.”

https://www.itproportal.com/news/b2b-firms-are-getting-cold-feet-on-buying-decisions/

How to improve sales effectiveness with guided selling

Over the last four years, more than half (51%) of top-performing companies have either turned to or plan to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered guided selling by 2025, according to Gartner.

Gartner says: “AI functionality has permanently transformed the form and function of guided selling capabilities. B2B sales organizations should help sellers improve sales execution by adding AI-based guided selling to their sales technology stack”.

Those who adopt this solution are able to spend 50% more of their time in productive prospecting, and are at least 84% more likely to achieve their quotas . Those are just some of the benefits.

https://customerthink.com/how-to-improve-sales-effectiveness-with-guided-selling/

THE GREAT RESIGNATION: SEISMIC SHIFTS IN THE ECONOMY HAS HIT COMPANIES WITH HIGHER EMPLOYEE QUIT RATES

In all, 20.2 million workers left their employers from May through September.

A survey found that 73% of 380 employers in North America were having difficulty attracting employees, three times the share that said so the previous year.

And 70% expect this difficulty to persist into 2022.

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/syndicated/great-resignation-seismic-shifts-economy-hit-companies-higher-employee-quit-rates/

Consumers spent $34 bn online in one holiday week in US

The US consumers spent a total of $33.9 billion online, from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday,

According to Adobe Digital Economy Index, consumers spent a total of $10.7 billion on Cyber Monday alone.

https://retail.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/consumers-spent-34-bn-online-in-one-holiday-week-in-us/88046268

The post Gong unveiling all the products? Guided selling? B2B buyers having cold feet? appeared first on Salesman.com.

In this week’s episode of The Social Selling Show, Daniel and Will reveal tips on how to successfully start sales conversations on LinkedIn.

Will Barron:

This episode of the show is brought to you from the Salesman.org HubSpot Studio. Welcome to the Social Selling Show. Myself Will Barron founder over at Salesman.org and the king, the freaking king of selling, Daniel Disney. Daniel, how's it going mate?

Daniel Disney:

It is going very well. We're excited to be back and today I know we've got quite an interesting topic that I'm very excited to dig into.

Will Barron:

Well we're going to dive into how to appropriately start a conversation on LinkedIn, on social media without it being weird. It can't be as simple as just doing what I do every week for yourself Daniel and be like, “Hey, how's it going.” So Daniel, how do we … probably multiple criteria here, but I'll start super open ended. How do we start a conversation with a potential prospect on LinkedIn without it being weird, salesy, and just not appropriate and unbusiness like all together?

Daniel Disney:

Well, there are two key components in my experience. Number one, separate to the whole, I say separate, separate to the whole social selling piece is confidence. You need to be confident. You need to be confident and comfortable in what you're doing. The moment you have or show any nervousness or uncomfortability that's where you start to show the sales colours as such. Then the other bit is you need to have knowledge. You need to have knowledge on them and you need to have knowledge on obviously what it is you want to talk to them about. So we'll talk a little bit today around doing research, having a bit of homework and the balancing act of what to look for and how not to spend hours and hours and hours researching every facet of their life to only use one little bit of information. So yeah, knowledge and confidence are the key components of starting effective conversations on LinkedIn.

Will Barron:

Totally going to sidetrack here. But is confidence the secret hack, if there is one to sales in general? What I mean by that Daniel is, I know that our training project we sell at salesman.org, I can talk about it comfortably. I'm really happy with the quality of it and I've never really worked at any bad companies. I've only ever worked for, by fluke if nothing else, outstanding companies in the space. So I've always felt this confidence. But I know that I don't need to lie, I don't need to manipulate people.

Will Barron:

If someone is a good fit and they don't sign up, it's almost their loss. Of course perhaps I'm losing out some revenue and opportunity there, but I can walk away confidently from these conversations when someone doesn't want to sign up and go, “Well, it's your problem not mine.” It's confidence that they hack to all of this, because I feel like a lot of traditional sales training, sales training in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, was how to fake confidence, how to manipulate people, because you're not really sure on what you're selling. So is confidence the answer to a lot of what we talk about in modern B2B sales?

Daniel Disney:

Confidence is a huge part of sales and you see it in pretty much all types of outreach and prospecting, whether it's cold calling, email, video, face to face. If there is a lack of confidence pretty much the whole thing's going to fall apart. But then you see it with the successful salespeople. They often have just such a deep belief in what it is they sell and you're sort of talking about, I've never worked for a bad company. It's probably because they've made you believe that they are the best. The reality is they may not have been the best. There probably were competing products that were better in other ways.

Daniel Disney:

But when you start with a company if they can make you truly believe in what that company does, the products and the service, that instals a confidence where you are so passionate about it. You're just passing that passion on. And as with anything in sales, it's a balancing act. You can't be over excited where you just want to talk features and benefits and it's all focused on the products. But you need to be confident in yourself and confident in your ability to help people. So I guess there is a right and wrong type of confidence.

Will Barron:

For sure. Well, if we have a scale with confident individual, successful individual on one end, the other end is probably going to be arrogant, manipulative, idiot. And most people to be fair are somewhere in between. And obviously we want to push toward that confident side the best we can. And again, we'll side track. We'll come back to social selling in a second. But genuinely I've only ever worked for the best companies in their spaces. Again, it could have been fluke. It could have been unconsciously by design, this recognised brands and I want to work with these organisations. Maybe that's part of the big hack, the big secret to selling, of not selling crappy products. Because it's probably 50% of the audience are going, “Well yeah, are quite good, but maybe there are bad products on the marketplace.” And there's probably another 50% saying what I'm saying of, “Hey, I do work for the market leader. I do work for HubSpot, Salesforce.” One of these massive brands that do incredibly well in this space. So is that part of the puzzle that perhaps we don't put enough emphasis on to be confident, to be able to start conversations being from the brand of the organisation that we represent, how important is that to starting a conversation?

Daniel Disney:

I think there's two levels to that, because I do think you're right. Where working for a leading company is a huge advantage. And a good point of a lot of sales people, a lot of sales people take a job that's given or offered to them. They don't chose the job as much as they probably could or should. And that's advice to any salesperson of any position listening to this, next time you're looking for a sales role, do take the time to be more picky. Don't jump on the first person that gives you a call or an interview. Look for the product. Choose the product, because they need you as much as you need them. And I think there needs to be more of that in sales.

Daniel Disney:

The flip side to it, I've worked in companies in the past that weren't the market leader, but had a very competitive product, and my role, my teams role as sales is to go out and obviously help people understand that there's value in it. So I guess the other part of it is you might not be the market leader, but that doesn't mean your product doesn't have value and cannot compete with the market leader and there's not ways you can make it the right solution to your customers. So I think a big part of that confidence can come down to belief. And if you are the market leader, then fantastic. Then in theory, there may be an extra level of ease to it. But you'll still get your competitors probably competing quite closely to you. I see a lot of products now, the differences are minimal.

Will Barron:

Yeah. You set that up perfectly. And this is why I dug in a little bit there, because my background working medical devices, I worked for Olympus, I've worked for KARL STORZ, super well known brands in the space. KARL STORZ basically invented endoscopic surgery, which was the products I was selling, and I would literally just wave my badge. It wasn't even an NHS badge, it was going into a hospital, I waved my KARL STORZ identity badge in the window and I would be welcomed basically into any operating room in the U.K. Now if you worked for one of these still massive mega corporations that competed with them, like Stryker or Smith+Nephew, I've seen it where I'd be invited in and then the surgeon would be like, “Who's that dude from X, Y, Z Medical? I'm trying to work here, get them away from things.” And it's important to get both sides of the tail here, and you've done it perfect there Daniel, of if you've got a brand, for a lot of times in my experience, that is the beginning of your conversation. That gets you in the door. So-

Daniel Disney:

Bringing that back to social selling, Will … Sorry to interrupt you there … there's a really interesting point that again, we haven't discussed before. When you work for a big brand, obviously that is visible on LinkedIn. It can be in your job title. It will be on your profile, and you're absolutely right, that can be an in. Let's use Gong as an example. There's a high chance when people get messages from people at Gong, they recognise the company, just like you waving that badge and that can be a route in. So if you do work for a recognised company, then absolutely use that. Make sure it's visible in your profile. Have it in your title and headline. Make sure it's really prominent in your summary, because that is the equivalent of you waving the badge and potentially getting in front of the reader. Obviously we're talking about starting a conversation. I guess that's step one, use the brand and company you work for if it's something that's usable.

Will Barron:

… Yep. HubSpot, all the team have the orange background in their profile pictures. Dead obvious and clear that it's HubSpot. Gong have that jewel tone background in their background profile pictures. This is a call out to sales leadership and sales management to get everyone on a branded image if they can. That makes a big difference. But let's put that to one side, because that's great if you've got it right. Let's assume that you work for a decent company that you're pretty proud of and your somewhat confident to the products, how do we connect to someone on LinkedIn? Or do we? I guess, let's start from the very beginning, to get the conversation started. Do we connect with them? Do we send them an email first? We won't spend too long on that element of the prospecting, and we'll get into the conversation afterwards. But if we want to start a conversation with someone on LinkedIn, do we connect with them first, do we cold email them? What is the best way to be in a position to have a conversation?

Daniel Disney:

So there's two realities to this in my experience, Will. One is there's often very little difference in how you start out. Your first touch point, whether it's a LinkedIn connection, whether it's a cold call, whether it's a cold email. There's often very little difference. The only thing some companies do, those that have additional resources put into it is obviously really target it to the buyer. So if you were doing some research you see your prospect is very active on LinkedIn, then LinkedIn is probably going to be your best first call. If they're not very active, then email or phone might be a better call. It takes a little bit more effort, but it can help drive some better results. So often very little difference though in how you start that approach. What I'd recommend doing is again, mirror what your buyers or prospects are showing through either their digital presence or their activities. So yeah, 2I wouldn't say there's too much difference between them.

Will Barron:

So our buyer is active on a LinkedIn. They're a CFO. Perhaps they've got a thousand followers, and they're posting content somewhat regularly. They're not trying to build a massive brand, but they are trying to be visible on there for thought leadership or whatever reason that they're on there for. How do we connect with them? I know this is going back to basics for a second here, but do we send them a message? Do we just connect? Does it depend on how strong our brand is, our personal brand and the brand we represent? How do we go about connecting with them so that we can or … I think this probably isn't the answer, or do we send them a LinkedIn message, or any message? InMail, whatever it's called.

Daniel Disney:

Yeah, the easiest way Will, and I teach this through LinkedIn training and Sales Navigator training. The easiest most successful way to do it is a three step approach. Number one, engage in their content. Now a little trick to being able to do that effectively is follow their profile first. So you can follow them. There's no connection. You can't message them directly. You can send them an InMail if you have Sales Navigator. But by following them they'll be in your feed. So over the period of three to five days you can see what they're posting as they post it live, and engage on a few of their posts. Don't become a stalker, as like and comment on every single post, because they'll see right through that. But if they post twice comment on one. If they post three times, comment on two. Do a few of their posts, then send them a connection request and reference one of the posts.

Daniel Disney:

Now this is assuming they're posting, so we'll use that as the example. Reference the post in the message. So, “Hi Will, loved your post that you shared yesterday.” But really do talk about it, don't just say I liked your post. What did you like about the post? What bit in particular did you really like? Show that you've made an effort. You've actually consumed it. High connection rates, and you're also starting a conversation without tactically starting a conversation because you often get a response and there you go, the door is open. You can start to navigate that into a more sales conversation.

Will Barron:

Perfect. Dead seamless. This is how dumb I am with this stuff. I wouldn't have even thought to follow them. I would have just put it in my diary to go back to their profile page every day and checked. Like Facebook was 15 years ago when there was no feed on there. So that's perfect. So let's assume they're accepted the request, but they haven't responded to the message. Which is if you've ever messaged me on LinkedIn, is probably the case. I'll accept people. I've read your message. I've just not got the time to go through all the LinkedIn messages and we don't do … It's more funds of the content that reach out to me as opposed to business opportunities. So I apologise if you've messaged me on LinkedIn and you've not had a reply. Probably I've read it. Let's assume they've read it, because they've accepted it, but they've not engaged in our comments on their post. What do we do to start an actual formal conversation I guess, where we say hi and they say hi and the conversation starts going back and forth?

Daniel Disney:

Here it is, Will, is one of the most effective things you can do right now in 2021, and I guarantee you probably by this time next year this isn't going to be as affective as it is right now. Sending audio, voice notes, or a video message. Because when you send a personalised connection request, that starts in the message chat, so that is the first message. That will appear as the first message in your conversation. So if they don't reply, and you send another written message, it does look quite salesy and it is very difficult to create a worded one that is going to prompt a conversation. If they haven't replied, there's a lower chance they're going to reply to another written message. However, a voice note or a video message stands out and it captures their attention.

Daniel Disney:

And I'm seeing a small 5% of the sales teams I'm working with are utilising this and it's just incredibly successful at the moment. And I think because it's interactive, because it's disruptive, because it's different, it's getting attention. So yeah, if you've sent that personalised connection request, they haven't responded, ping them a quick sub one minute audio message or video message and prompt the conversation. But just make sure you're passionate in the message, whether it's video or audio. But they've proven to be really effective. I guess the biggest challenge with it for a lot of people is they've never done it and so it's quite scary. So if you've never done an audio or a video message, practise first.

Will Barron:

Okay. And the answer to this question is, well it depends, Will. But I've got to ask it. What the heck are we talking about in this video message? Are we talking about, “Hey, it's Will, Barron from Salesman.org. We've got a new accelerated training product. I'd love you to sign up for a free trial.” And then hang up. Is it a message like that or is it more along the lines of what we've been going with so far of trying to drive an organic conversation?

Daniel Disney:

It's a really interesting question. I was analysing some message templates yesterday, Will, and so many sales people that's their style of pitch, whether it's written, audio, video. It's, “Hi, I'm Will. This is what I do, blah, blah, blah.” Then it's, “This is why I think I can help you.” And the first bit of advice I give to everyone is, open it about them. Make it about them. “Hi, this is Will. I really think I can help you do this. Or I think I can help you achieve this.” Make it about it, “I noticed you do this. I think I can help you achieve this.” Make it about them at the start, then tell them what it is you do.

Daniel Disney:

Again, regardless of whether it's written, audio or voice, open it about them then tell them, show them how you think you can do it. And then have a really simple call to action. One of the more effective ones is, “I'd love to send you just a little bit more information on what we do. If you could just pop me your email address, I'd love to ping something across and if it's of interest, maybe it's something we can discuss.” Play it cool. I find the, “Are you free tomorrow for 15 minutes to jump on a call,” to be much less effective than trying to organically grow that conversation.

Daniel Disney:

And just to take this to the side as well, whilst you're doing this, because you're now connected, please also make sure you're sharing content as well, so they're getting value and getting to know you. If you rely purely on that conversation, it's going to take a lot longer. But, if whilst you're having this message exchange, which might take a few days, if you're sharing content and giving value at the same time, you're increasing the chance that they're starting to warm up to. You increase that reply response rate and you also increase the chance they're going to be open to a conversation.

Will Barron:

For sure. So I would go one step further in what we have tested at Salesman.org and we'll talk about this on future episodes. This should all be on the blog by the time this show goes out. So it sounds like it's a surprise now, but it really isn't a surprise because it'll all be published by the. But, we are getting our audience, there's 2,000 people, members of the Salesman.org community now. We're giving them essentially assignments. We're giving them experiments to run and then they're reporting back on it. Now, of course, not everybody does it, but hundreds of people are replying in the forum at the moment and going back and forth on things. And one of the things that we're asking people to do is lead with insights. Whether that's an insightful email as in, “Hey, I saw this gardener article. I saw this forestry report.”

Will Barron:

None of this is rocket science. I've been banging about this for years. But one of the things I'm finding from the current experience that we're running is, it doesn't matter where you share this incite, whether it be on a cold call or how this might be useful for you, “I've just been speaking with someone in a capacitor company with similar products. They found this really useful. I'd love you to check it out.” To follow up with an email and drop you the link. Whether it's an email of the similar thing, or if it's on LinkedIn. Even on Twitter this is working where you share article posts. Better if it's a report, even better if you are … I use HubSpot as an example all the time because they sponsor all our stuff. They've got so much good content. So many good reports.

Will Barron:

Gong or brands who are in this space have similar internal content marketing that you can leverage. You share something from your own organisation is even better. And then the reply rate on that is insane. And again, this might die off eventually if everyone starts doing the same thing, but it's so value up front of, “Hey, we worked with people similar to you. They found this useful. You will probably find this useful.” It sets you up as somewhat of a subject matter expert in the fact that you know the relevance of this content for this individual.

Will Barron:

And then this business, even it's in the back of their mind, they're going, “Hey, even if I don't buy anything from these guys, this person's probably going to be useful for my career moving forward, if he continues, or she continues sending me these little bits of information I would have missed otherwise.” That, long story short is working incredibly well as maybe you wouldn't do it in your linked in connection request, but your second third message or a video of, “Hey, do you want to put a face to a name? This, this and this. Worked with a competitor, we're looking at working with a competitor, here's a piece of content they found really useful. You might find it useful as well.” That's working really well in the Salesman.org community, and the feedback from that. Again, it might not work in two years from now if everyone starts doing something similar, which tends to be the case of all this, but that's what I'm working on at the moment, and what we're pushing our audience to do.

Daniel Disney:

I actually love that, Will. That give to get mentality in sales is so effective, because I think probably for the longest time now in sales it's been just the taking mentality for sales people. They're calling, they're emailing, they're sending messages. And as I said, most of the templates I see, it's all about them. Here's what I do. Here's everything about me. Here's a link to my calendar, so you can book a meeting or have you got 15 minutes, it's all about you. And selfless sales people are succeeding more effectively right now where they give first. So yeah, however you do that, give to get. And that's probably one of the biggest tips we can give when it comes to starting a conversation on LinkedIn is give first and personalising it is a method of giving. It's showing you've done homework. It's showing you've made an effort. Having to read through their profile. Having to read through their activity. Finding something whether it's about them or something that's going to be valuable to them is one of the best ways to start a conversation.

Daniel Disney:

And I think what is very important that we also covered today, Will, is how much time you spend researching it. Because I trained a company last week and they were trying to tell me it takes them between 45 minutes and an hour per prospect to research before they contact them. And I was genuinely quite shocked at that amount of time, unless you're selling extremely high ticket items. That would be the only time that I could probably justify that amount of time spent on research. You shouldn't need to spend that time.

Will Barron:

Sure. And that would be me in medical devices. If I was going in to meet a surgeon I'd be ringing the [inaudible 00:20:36] manager to get the gossip on what's going on. I'd be speaking with biomedical engineering to see what services they offer to the surgeons. It was always the biggest deal to get this internet cable from the camera system and plug it into the hospital network. If we could make that connection, the whole deal went so much more seamlessly, because the biomedical engineering didn't want anything on the network. They didn't want any surgeon passing information around.

Will Barron:

So I would genuinely spend an hour or two maybe even an afternoon going around fishing because those deals, I'd only have to close four or five of them a year, and that was my target smashed. But for most people, that's not the cases, especially if we're doing that initial outreach. So how long should be … the answer again, is it depends, Will. But from an initial outreach of a company that we're trying to do discovery with. We're trying to see if we are a good fit with them, how long should we be researching each of these people that we're engaging with?

Daniel Disney:

It will differ. Best example I can give is it's like an onion. You're peeling certain layers. For some of your prospects you'll get that information from their profile. They'll have lots of information in it and you'll be able to use enough from that to start conversation. Others you need to take a layer off and look at their activity. So look at what they're posting or engaging with. They might not be sharing content. Or look at what they're commenting on or what they're liking and sharing themselves, because there will be insights in that.

Daniel Disney:

Now if there's no information in that, the next layer is their website. Or their LinkedIn company page, and their LinkedIn company page's activity. Something more corporate. Have a read through that. The next layer, which is a lot deeper, but actually can be really effective, is other people working in the business. So if I'm trying to sell to the VP of marketing, I want to look at other people in the marketing team. I might look at the sales team or the customer service team, because there definitely will be people within there that are sharing insights, sharing content and it might be something you take from there to then mention in your conversation. Peel back the layers.

Daniel Disney:

Some people it will not take you long at all. It might take you a minute to see something and think, “Yep, that's what I need.” Others it might take five minutes, 10 minutes. Some might take a little bit more effort. You've always got to make sure you're weighing up how much value you think that prospect is going to offer you. You don't want to be spending half an hour, an hour, two hours on a prospect that isn't a high value prospect. So do make sure you keep that long term view point of okay, how valuable is this prospect likely to be? How likely do I think I can convert them? And then that should reflect the time you put in.

Will Barron:

Sure. And some of this will happen organically. If you follow someone for five days, as a round number, a work week, and you're following their posts, following their content, then inadvertently, you've probably done all the research you need to know because they're going to be posting what's top of mind for them. They're going to be posting, if they are posting … we'll go into that in a second if they're not … but if they are posting, they're probably posting somewhat topical things that you can relate to within that week. It's time boxed as obviously content drops off the face of the earth after a little bit when it's been posted on LinkedIn, and people are aware of this.

Will Barron:

So it's somewhat timely. It's going to be appropriate to them in that moment. And they're almost putting their hand up and saying, “Hey, there's an opportunity to collaborate here.” You're more likely to get a response by me by commenting on one of my posts, because I understand the algorithm and I want to increase the reach of the posts so I want to engage in that conversation after the fact in the comments itself, than if you just message me in general. So anyone who's relatively clued up might be thinking, or inadvertently thinking the same thing.

Will Barron:

But what happens, Daniel, if … You've answered this question somewhat with the onion analogy … but what happens if they're not posting on LinkedIn. But let's say they've got 2,000 followers. So at some point they have been active on there. It's not just a blank profile and maybe that one we should be using a different prospecting method. Let's assume that they've been active on there in the past, but they're not posting right now. Should we wait until the start posting, or should we still try and engage them on previous posts, or should we just send them a direct message? How do we go about that?

Daniel Disney:

It's an interesting question. So I sometimes do live prospect research with the companies that I trade and I did one this week. And this person that we were looking at, one of their prospects, they were really active three years ago in their previous role. Whenever since joining the current company which we're trying to prospect, then got totally quiet. Not created a single bit of content. But they were really active, which I found it absolutely fascinating. What we did was we looked all the activity section and actually they were still very frequently on a weekly basis, liking and commenting on other posts. So my advice to the sales person was go and engage in those posts as well so your name starts to get on their radar.

Daniel Disney:

And if you can, if there is an authentic, organic way to do it, you can reply to one of their comments on the post even better, because comments are becoming the new posts. You see some comments get more likes than the post itself. And if they've commented something that gives you a segue to add to or contribute, then again, it's the equivalent to commenting on their post. So they might not be posting, but if they're commenting, and you can reply to that, it's the same impact. It's still going to make you feel good. It's still exposure and all those wonderful things.

Daniel Disney:

So that's another way to look at, as we said with the onion analogy, the other thing to do is look at other people in the business. So let's say VP of marketing isn't active, maybe their commenting and you can do that. Maybe you go to marketing executive, now if you start to engage and comment on their content, there s quite a high chance Mr. VP or Mrs. VP of marketing if going to see that. And that's still your name coming up on their radar. So there are all these little opportunities. Again, it's just about peeling back the layers and finding the route in.

Will Barron:

So I've not asked you to prepare this, so I'll be pleasantly surprised if you know it off the top. But is there any data or science on this, because what we're alluding to here is this idea of your name, your face being seen lots of times pre-post and the midst of conversation. We're assuming it adds to a layer of familiarity. We're assuming it adds to a level of rapport that you wouldn't otherwise had if you just cold called someone out of the blue perhaps.

Will Barron:

And I'll go as far to say as we're assuming that if you can add smart insightful comments, it's increasing your perceived product knowledge, industry knowledge. You're going to be seen as less of a slimy sales person and more of a product expert of something like that. There's obviously a line where product experts are typically sales people as well. But you're leaning more towards that as a resource as opposed to someone who's just going to suck and take from the buyer and put them off the entire engagement process. But is there any data or science in any of this? Because we're making a few assumptions here that I assume to be true, probably are true, but it'd be interesting if they've ever been researched.

Daniel Disney:

There isn't any data or science and it's something I'm working on trying to create some more tangible numbers comparing it to other methods. I can only share it from my experience, from the companies that I work with. Having seen this in real time, having worked pre-social selling and sort of post social selling, I know what it's like to sell to people who have no idea who I am and even to people who have no idea who my company is. And then I know what it's like, very recently I sent a connection request to a managing director of a company. Never spoken to them, I have no relationship with them. And the first message they sent me was, “Daniel, your reputation proceeds you. Looking forward to chat.”

Daniel Disney:

Now, I then sent a video message and we had a strong conversation. You'd never get that had that person not known. If they had no idea who I was, there's a lot of steps I have to take before I'm going to get to that conversation. But those steps are sort of fast tracked as such. So I know from experience, but I'm hoping to collect some data soon that we can share, that I think is going to highlight what you and I both know and experience anyway.

Will Barron:

Sure. And I'll make a note and I'll have a look at this, and I'll put anything I find in the show notes, because this doesn't have to be anything to do with social selling. It could just be familiarity with celebrity on social media. I bet you there's some kind of study where they look at whether teenage kids feel like they have a relationship with someone that they follow on TikTok or something like that. So what we're describing here is probably a smaller, a less broad application of that. But I bet you there's research on that. Because it seems obvious, right? I listen to loads of Joe Rogan and his podcast. I'm pretty confident … so here we go, in my head, I'm pretty confident that I could sit down with Joe Rogan, have a great conversation. He said some stupid stuff that I think I could clear up. He's made some assumptions, and every time he does so in the podcast, I'm like, “Ah Joe, when I meet you mate I'll set you clear on that.”

Will Barron:

But then the reality is, he doesn't know that I exist. Clearly he doesn't consume any of our content. It's unreasonable to even just imagine that he would. So the conversation itself would be completely one sided and weird. So I'm experiencing an again, a broad effect of what we're trying to do subtly, of just get your name in the … And you're mates with some Sam Downing as well. He did this to me. I was like, “Who the hell is this dude?” Next thing a month later I'm on his podcast. I don't do podcasts ever. I never guest anyone's podcast. And just conversation, commenting on essentially everyone of our posts, everyone of my posts, moving forward. Video messages, the occasional voice mail message, I helped him out, I think I would say I helped him out with something business wise, and he sent me a bottle of whisky.

Will Barron:

Next thing I'm on his podcast and that's what we're talking about here, isn't it? I don't feel like I was sold but he might have gone into the relationship at first going, “Will has this, access to these people, I want access to these people, and I'll make it happen appropriately.” So he's done a fantastic job and I'll tag him in this post when it goes out, but he's done a fantastic job doing this not to me, but with me, live as I'm learning more about social selling as well.

Daniel Disney:

Think of the positive impact, Will. This is probably the third or fourth time you've mentioned Sam throughout this.

Will Barron:

I know, yeah.

Daniel Disney:

No, as it should be. But it's a positive impact. This isn't selling in the way people perceive selling, this is just being an authentic person who cares about what they do, genuinely wants to help and there is as much give as there is take. It's a mutually beneficial relationship that leaves you with a positive impression of that person. That is as you're saying right now, sales done right. Whatever platform you use, that is sales done right. But I think you're right, there is this level of, celebrity is a weird word when we talk about LinkedIn, but there is this association when you get to know someone and see them frequently enough. When you meet them you do feel like you've got, I call it a digital relationship. You feel like you have a level of a relationship, and that is so powerful.

Daniel Disney:

Again, having come from a time in sales when none of that existed, and you are literally the coldest worst person in the world when you have that first conversation. And you have to climb a mountain to build rapport when you can walk in. It's kind of the Sandler methodology. When you can walk in and be on a level playing field with your prospect, which is what you're able to do with LinkedIn and social selling, that creates a much stronger relationship where it becomes a more positive experience.

Will Barron:

So I'll get your thoughts first, so I don't colour what you're going to say here Daniel, is this the future of selling? So it doesn't have to be on LinkedIn as a platform, it doesn't necessarily have to be across social media. But this idea of there being a … Right now there's a sliding scale of one end is Sam Downing, hopefully is what I'm doing as well, and what you're doing. You're creating insightful content. Pointing out that, building an audience, lots of inbound leads. And when you do reach out to people outbound, not every time, but sometimes, they'll know you. So that's one end.

Will Barron:

The other end is the used car sales person. Where they know that if you come into the showroom and you leave, you're probably never coming back. So they're going to do everything weird manipulation tactic known to man to try and just get you to sign something. It doesn't matter what it is, just sign something so that they can continue selling to you over the days or weeks to buy some crappy used car. So those are the two ends. Let me ask you this, I'll phrase it like this, is it true that five years from now there's going to be not a grey area in the middle, there'll be one or the other? 

Daniel Disney:

I think it is, Will. And just to add some context to this, Mark Hunter, who I know you know. Author of High Profit Prospecting and a Mind For Sales, has posted something last night, tagged me in it, an amazing article where in the U.S. one of the biggest companies out there has banned cold calling for all of their sales team and is now pushing all the resources into things like LinkedIn and referrals. Can't remember the name of it. I will find it offline. Maybe we can add it to the show notes.

Daniel Disney:

But, Mark was starting a very interesting thread about whether this was a positive or a negative thing. Regardless of the deeper thoughts around it, that's a big statement piece for a very large public facing company to declare that that pure cold outreach on the other end of the spectrum is no longer what they feel to be effective, and actually looking for warmer approaches via referrals, via LinkedIn and obviously other means, is something they see as the future of sales. So yes, I agree. I do think pure cold has been shrinking and I think will continue to shrink. I think there'll be more. And LinkedIn is one of many other ways you can do warmer outreach. But I found it quite interesting to see such a large company make that choice.

Will Barron:

So you said two things here. I'm being slightly pedantic, but I think it's useful. You said the company feels this way and they've made this choice. If the cold already isn't working, they're just not going to do it. Clearly they're not feeling this. This is not an emotional someone in the organisation has data that says, this doesn't work anymore. This does work anymore and a smart marketer has gone, “Hey, this is a story that we'll get publicity on if we publicise the fact that we're not doing cold calls anymore.” This is not an emotional decision. Sales maybe 1% of it can be … You can tie most into it, because it can lead to lots of influence on the backend of that. But it should be as best as you can, as logical as possible, if I know that I'm going to create, I'm going to suck it up for six months, 12 months, I'm going to become known as whoever in my little space.

Will Barron:

So me, medical device sales, I use this analogy all the time. In hindsight now, I would start … it's so much easier to start a podcast now that what it was six years ago, seven years ago. I'd start a podcast. I would interview all the surgeons in Yorkshire. I don't give an S if nobody listens to it. I'm just now the hope and the spoke show of the surgeons and I'm the centre of this little network. And then once a quarter, I invite everyone who's been on the show recently out for lunch, and that's it. Then I would create a blog post. I'd pay someone to transcribe the interviews, and I'd pay someone probably, if I've not got time myself, or I'd get my marketing organisation to do it, to create a blog post, and that's a blog.

Will Barron:

And then when I wanted to cold outreach to someone, I'd say, even if it was a cold call, if we're going down that route, which I think is the most difficult way to connect with someone in a way that adds value at this moment in time. I do what I said earlier, “Hey, I've just been speaking to Dr. yada yada, I've got this blog post, we've transcribed it. I think this might be really useful to you because you do the same urology service as this individual. Do you want me to send it over? What's your email address? I'll get it over now. If there's anything you want to chat about on the back of this, perhaps I can make an introduction between you and them or I can add to some value in another way in between.” As the mere sales person, as opposed to all you high ranking surgeons. Because immediately when you do that the surgeon goes, “Oh, crap. This person isn't a sales person. They're an expert in the domain. They're an expert in the space.” And it's three months away. It's six months away.

Will Barron:

And once you've built it, that IP, that intellectual property, that podcast, that asset is yours. It's not the companies. I went from Olympus, the best in the space to KARL STORZ, the other best in the space. They both have essentially 48% market share across the endoscopy market here in the U.K. And all, not all, but a bunch of my customers came over with me, because they wanted to deal with me as opposed to the products are both great, so they're somewhat product agnostic. Now if I'd gone to a crappy company, I'm sure they wouldn't have followed me over. But having that intellectual property, sucking it up for three to six months, 12 months to build it, and then being able to outreach with insights that are yours and unique, even on a cold call that is got to be the future of sales.

Will Barron:

And that turns you from this cliché where sales managers, you've probably said it yourself, Daniel, of think of yourself as an entrepreneur and you've got your territory, and you're running a little business. It turns it from a wishy washy analogy to every sales manager of all time has said, into an actual reality where you do have some ownership and you're sales manager is going, “Will's had a bit of a down month, it's okay though, because he brings in so many leads for everyone else that we can't really get rid of him. Let's see if we can promote him or move him sideways into a slightly different role where we can incentivize him in different ways.” That all comes on the back of this idea of these used car sales people, those product experts and if you're somewhere in the middle you're just dead. You're done. Because all the traditional way of doing sales, it's just gone forever.

Daniel Disney:

It's a really good point Will, if we break this down to core focus of this episode today around starting the conversation, it's about giving value. How do you give value? You do something that's relevant to your prospects. It could be a podcast, it could be a YouTube channel. It could be LinkedIn personal brand or content. It could be a blog series. There are so many ways. Micro communities. This is one of the new things I'm seeing lots of people create, micro communities relevant to their target prospects. There are so many things you can do within LinkedIn, outside of LinkedIn. There are so many options, and that's exactly what I would do, Will. And it is easier now than it was when both of us started.

Daniel Disney:

But that is where I would start. I would create something that was relevant and value to may target prospects and just build and build and build. Because you're right, you take it with you. It stays as long as you don't brand it towards the company you work with. As long as it is your thing, you can take it everywhere. And that is leading towards the … And I know it's a marmite word, thought leadership place, where you become credible, respected and valuable in your industry. Where people see you and there is a level of respect associated to that. That is definitely where sales is now ans will continue to go.

Will Barron:

It has to. It just has to. And I'll wrap up with this, for anyone who isn't sold, the best way to describe it is the buyer journey. 10 years ago the buyer would get so far and they would have to speak to a sales person to get pricing information, literature. You'd be hanging out a flyer, whatever it is. The seller had the key to making the sale. Now the buyer, again, this is cliché that we all talk about so much. The buyer is like, again this is cliché that we all talk about so much. The buyer is 70, 80, eventually they will be 90% of the way through the sales process, they don't need you for any of that stuff. So if you don't add something unique as an individual to the conversation, they might as well just ring customer services and buy online. Or not even ring services, just buy on an online order form.

Will Barron:

So unless you're positioning yourself as someone who adds, as you started the show with, Daniel, confidence, knowledge and the … because research gives us skill as well, which Daniel can teach you through his training … the ability to research an individual so you can have an insightful conversation. Unless you've got those three things, you're going to be replaced as sad as it sounds by an online order form. Oh, and customer service, which they don't pay commissions to and most businesses can just wrap up and scale much quicker than a sales team. If you don't have any of that, because of the buyer journey, because they're so far down the buying cycle. If you're not adding something unique at the end of it, buyers don't need you anymore. So that's slightly depressing, and exciting for anyone who's on the same wave length as you and I.

Daniel Disney:

It's exciting for people that truly care about selling. These are the people that are going to invest in all these extra curricular activities. They're going to help them long term. Will, you're not wrong. You're 100% right. As a sales person, you need to add as much value as the product and service that you are selling. You need to invest in you. Your company needs to invest in you, because that's where the longevity of the business lies. So yes, the future of sales is very much going to be putting value in yourself, and you need to make sure you're growing something that is going to give extra value to your prospects. You've got to ask yourself, why are they going to choose me? What am I going to offer that's different or extra, that's going to make them choose me? Now in five years, in 10 years time, now's the time to think about it. If you're just picking up the phone trying to hit this months target and you're not thinking ahead, it's going to get much more difficult.

Will Barron:

For sure. And this might be a problem with just selling as a career. That we only think quarterly. If you are in marketing, you might want to get to a marketing director role. If you are an architect you might want to do small houses, then bigger houses, then run your own firm, and then do some artistic piece. You might want to leave your mark on the planet. On the city that you live in. Sales, it's quarter to quarter to quarter, and hopefully we've got some good hobbies in the background, an actual life away from sales to spend all this hundreds of thousands of dollars of commission that we're hopefully all earning.

Will Barron:

Or maybe this is just a problem rooted in selling as it is right now that will hopefully change if people don't chose typically sales as a career. And hopefully we can mould it into more of a career for our audience and then for future sales people as well who are going to be listening to this in 10 years and be going, “Those two idiots were completely wrong about everything. In hindsight, that was complete nonsense.” So with that Daniel, we'll wrap up there mate. Anything else you want to add to the conversation before we wrap things up properly?

Daniel Disney:

No, but just to summarise, if you want to start conversations effectively, make an effort. Do some homework and make the more about them. Make a little bit less about you and your amazing products that I'm sure you're very passionate about. But make it about them. Talk about how you can help them first. That is one of the biggest keys to starting all conversations. Because that can't be automated. A bot can't do that. It shows you care, and it's going to build a relationship that goes beyond just the sales. So yes, make an effort is my final thought. Give it a try. You'll see hopefully it starts more conversations for you.

Will Barron:

And give it a try is my feedback on all of this. I feel like I've done some rants on this episode. I feel like we've gone off the rails a little bit. You don't over complicate anything that we've just said. We've gone through the history of sales, the future of sales, becoming a thought leader in this space whatever that … that word will change into something else. I'm sure over time. We might not even be called sales people once we are product and industry experts or thought leaders, whatever we're going to call it. But yeah, don't let any of that stop you from reaching out to people with an article, a blog post, whatever it is. A friendly message now. Get it done and you can test and see what works from there.

Will Barron:

So that will wrap up this episode of the Social Selling Show, that was Daniel Disney, the king of social selling. My name is Will Barron, founder of Salesman.org and we'll speak to you next week on next week's episode of the Social Selling Show.

Daniel Disney:

See you next time.

The post How To Start A Sales Conversation On LinkedIn appeared first on Salesman.com.

On this episode of the Salesman Podcast Suneel Gupta explains what being “backable” is and why some salespeople get ahead and others don't.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

The post The Surprising Truth Behind What Makes People Take a Chance on You appeared first on Salesman.com.

Nobody's perfect, especially in the world of sales.

Even if buyers love you, your sales team and you're building rapport within mere seconds of getting on the phone. Even if you're blowing your quota out of the water every month. And even if you're the undisputed leader in your industry…

The fact remains, there's always—always—room for improvement in sales performance.

But the first step towards getting better is understanding how well you're doing in the first place. That's where measuring your sales effectiveness comes in. And the more you factor your sales effectiveness into your processes, the better poised you'll be to take home some fat commission checks.

So, what is sales effectiveness exactly? How do you measure it? And what steps can you take to improve yours?

We'll answer these questions and more in this guide. We'll also look at specific metrics to consider, the importance of alignment, sales effectiveness versus sales efficiency, and much more.

It can be tough to nail down a single, indisputable definition of sales effectiveness. Depending on your organization, it may be the amount of revenue a salesperson generates. For others, it could be leads generated in a new vertical.

But ultimately, sales effectiveness boils down to one thing:

“Sales effectiveness is the measurement of how well a salesperson achieves specific outcomes.”

If that comes off a bit general, that's intentional. Different businesses have different measures of success, especially when it comes to building a growth strategy. And while one sales department may be tasked with bringing in as many new sales as possible, others may be focusing on promoting a new product.

It's the overarching goals, then, that define sales effectiveness—not just revenue.

Let's look at an example to clarify this point.

Let's say your accounting software company is trying to expand its customer base. Right now, they're pushing to target the shipping industry. Breaking into shipping will lead to the following results:

Making this shift is beneficial in the long run. As such, your sales department's goal for this quarter is to increase product sales to businesses within the shipping industry.

Now let's say a salesperson made an astonishing number of sales this quarter. They generated record-level revenue. But they only made sales in the current vertical and none in shipping. So despite pulling in some great numbers, this salesperson would have low sales effectiveness as a result.

It's essential, then, to base your sales effectiveness on the specific departmental goals that have been given to you rather than just revenue. Otherwise, you may be undermining a well-constructed strategy built to ensure more tremendous success later.

So, how important is sales alignment really? After all, isn't the end goal of hiring salespeople to make more money? Why can't we just shoot for more sales?

As it turns out, tightly aligned businesses tend to be far more successful than unaligned ones. Have a look.

So, while you may be tempted just to sell, sell, sell, a salesperson with high sales effectiveness meets goals, not just quotas.

Hitting goals means a stronger sales pipeline, more reliable customer acquisition and less time needed qualifying leads rather than converting them to potential customers.

How exactly does one measure sales effectiveness across a sales organization?

There are countless sales metrics you can use to measure your sales rep effectiveness. For example:

Sometimes, sales effectiveness is mistaken for sales efficiency. While the two terms are often used together, they're pretty different.

Despite being practically opposites of each other, you need to record both sales effectiveness and sales efficiency to get the complete picture of how well you're performing and to improve sales efficiency.

This full-picture view is often called sales productivity. High sales productivity means efficiently achieving the right goals, while low sales productivity means inefficiently achieving the wrong goals. In between is low effectiveness at high efficiency and vice versa.

You can see the outcome of different sales productivity variations using the sales productivity matrix from Highspot below.

Just like sales effectiveness, there are so many different ways to measure sales efficiency. Any expense used by the salesperson that contributes to a win can be used. Most metrics for this category will measure either time or the costs of tools.

Below are some of the most common sales efficiency metrics.

Now that you have a better understanding of sales effectiveness let's look at how to increase yours.

What doesn't get recorded doesn't get analyzed. That's why first and foremost, you need to start recording as many sales metrics as you can.

If you're a sales leader this shouldn't be a shock for you. Sales and marketing teams that don't track data and have a consistent sales process are measuring the wrong key performance indicators.

How often are you reaching your quota? How much revenue are you bringing in with each new deal? How prepared are leads for a sales conversation when marketing sends them your way?

The more information you have to work with, the better able you'll be to identify weak points in your processes and make improvements.

And don't forget to record efficiency metrics like time and tool expenses too. Otherwise, you won't be able to calculate your actual sales productivity.

We have already discussed the importance of goal alignment above. However, it can't be overstated how important this step is.

Be sure to communicate with team leaders and coordinate with other departments to define a cohesive strategy. Should you be focusing on customer retention? Which products should get priority? How do your goals impact the company strategy as a whole?

Understanding the answer to these questions will help you pick out which metrics you should be concentrating on when selling into the marketplace.

It turns out that 76% of content marketers don't create content for salespeople. Why is this problematic for sales teams? A whopping 79% of buyers said the winning vendor's content significantly impacted their buying decision.

You depend on having informative content to educate your prospective buyers and move them through their buyer's journey. What's more, having the right content for the right stage of that journey is critical.

That's why it's so essential your marketing department (or whoever handles content) provides you with the right type of content. You may need to work closely with your marketing team to create more catered content that moves sales leads forward. Or failing that, become more vocal about your management team's need for great buyer-focused content.

Once you've identified the metrics you should be targeting and have the right content to share with your buyers, it's time to standardize your sales processes.

Using a industry leading sales methodology like the Simple Selling Method is critical for improving overall sales performance.

This process of standardizing your sales strategy can be a challenging step for sales salespeople. Some companies have standard procedures defined, but few sales reps follow them. Some may even let reps follow their processes entirely.

The key here is to eliminate variables. Instead, create your sales process and stick to it. That way, you can figure out what's working and what isn't.

It's worth noting that companies with defined, standard workflows generate more revenue than those without them.

After putting your new metric-focused processes in place, it's time to reevaluate and optimize across your sales analytics.

How are you performing a week, month, or a quarter later? Have you seen improvements in the metric you're targeting?

If not, you'll need to go back and test another approach. Try out new best practices. Experiment with other sales tools. Seek out specialized coaching or training. Join the Selling Made Simple Academy.

If you have seen improvements in your sales results, be sure to keep optimizing for even more significant gains. Don't forget—no one is perfect. And the more you work at optimizing your sales processes for greater sales effectiveness; the better your metrics will look over time and the more chance you have of crushing your sales quota.

If you've just started to improve your sales effectiveness, it's important to remember that doing so is a process. Recording metrics, standardizing your processes, aligning your goals, optimizing—it all takes time. But with enough dedication and the right strategy, you'll start to see the value.

And for you, that means achieving more company objectives and, ultimately, becoming a better sales professional.

The post What Is Sales Effectiveness? + 5 Top Tips To Boost Yours appeared first on Salesman.com.

It takes thick skin to be a cold caller. The unreturned messages. The right-off-the-bat hang-ups. The downright rude remarks.

Even still, there are some people who thrive in the B2B cold call world. They’ve got the same resources as you. And the words on the page of their scripts aren’t any different than yours. So, what’s their secret? And what do you have to do to start seeing the same kinds of results?

That’s where the art of cold calling comes in.

The art of cold calling is that extra “something” that lets other salespeople close more deals than their colleagues. It’s the soft skills that go above and beyond those scripted words on the page. And it’s exactly what you need to start becoming a better cold caller.

This guide takes you through four tips for mastering the art of cold calling. Inside, we’ll look at how to improve your mindset, boost your confidence, build rapport on cold calls, and more. And for you, that means closing more deals and taking home bigger commission bonuses.

Before jumping into the art of the cold call, let’s look at the other equally important side—the science. There’s plenty of research out there on the hard and fast rules of selling well. Research like this:

Be sure you take these insights into account when building out your sales processes. Because without the proper science-backed foundation, mastering the art of cold calling won’t get you anywhere.

Contrary to what you may believe, great cold-calling B2B sales people aren’t born—they’re made. And when you follow the four tips below, you too can master the art of cold calling and become known as a cold calling break on your sales team.

This one’s simple. But it’s also vital.

If you don’t believe in the product you’re selling, you’re never going to excel at selling it. That’s because buyers can sense insincerity. Your body language, facial tics, and other barely perceptible cues hint at whether you’re telling the truth. And if you wouldn’t buy what you’re selling, those cues will communicate that to your buyer.

So if you don’t stand behind your product, it may be time to find something new to sell.

Pro Tip: Dive deep into researching your product. 

Learning about what you sell before jumping on a sales call is a necessity. If you’re having a hard time believing in your product, take some extra time to learn more about it.

Talk to subject-matter experts (SMEs) about use cases. Use the product yourself to get a feel for it. Read through testimonials from satisfied customers.

When the product you’re selling is a genuine part of your life, people can hear it in your voice. And that enthusiasm will be infectious.

Salespeople stuck in a rut will too often become fixated on the past:

This fixation on the past often leads to a vicious cycle since buyers can smell your desperation. And a desperate salesperson cannot be trusted. When you attach yourself to a particular outcome on a sales call (“I need to make this sale”), you’ve already lost the battle.

Instead, acknowledge that you’d like a positive outcome. But realize that there are other beneficial things to gain from the call, too (experience, practice, etc.).

This is known as having a “growth mindset,” Adopting it can do wonders for your sales career.

Pro Tip: Adopt a “growth mindset” to help you learn from failures.

Researchers have found two types of mindsets: a “fixed” mindset and a “growth” mindset.

Those with a fixed mindset believe they’re born with a fixed set of abilities. Their successes and failures aren’t in their control since their intelligence and skill set are unchangeable. For salespeople, thoughts like, “I was never right for sales” indicate a fixed mindset.

A growth mindset, on the other hand, recognizes that abilities can be changed. It takes work to make these changes, of course. But a growth-minded individual will look at failures as learning experiences. They may think, “I’m not great at sales now. But with enough experience, I can get better.”

As it turns out, individuals who held a growth mindset were three times more likely to score in the top 20% on tests. Those with a fixed mindset, on the other hand, were four times more likely to score in the bottom 20%.

The message here is clear: look at your experiences as chances to learn, not as opportunities to fail.

Though there’s value in a well-made script, humans ultimately want to buy from humans, not machines. And if you’re running through a list of questions in a lifeless, step-by-step manner, your buyers aren’t going to be engaged.

That’s why it’s up to you to connect with sales leads on a human level. Try straying just a hair from your script to ask follow-up questions and get your buyers talking. Comment on any personal-life anecdotes they share too.

Show your buyers that you are, in fact, an actual, breathing human. Because when you do, they’re going to be far more likely to trust you.

Pro Tip: Learn the techniques for building instant rapport with buyers. 

Building rapport is essential throughout the sales cycle. But for cold calls, your time to build that rapport with buyers is limited. That’s why you need to get to work—and fast.

Try these tactics to build rapport with your sales leads instantly.

We all have that voice in the back of our heads telling us we’ll never be good enough. Even the highest performing salespeople aren’t strangers to self-doubt. But when that voice becomes so strong that it’s all we focus on, it starts impacting our performance.

One way to curb that negative self-talk is by spinning those conversations in your head. For every negative criticism that pops into your head, try and find a positive alternative.

Below are a few examples of how to spin negative self-talk from the Mayo Clinic.

The more you identify and immediately spin your negative self-talk, the less of an impact it will have on you. And consequently, you’ll soon start noticing yourself feeling more confident on your sales calls.

After all, you are what you think.

Pro Tip: Hold your thoughts up to a magnifying glass. 

The first and often hardest step of spinning negative self-talk is catching yourself doing it. To do that, you need to become a pro at “thinking about thinking.” Try to become more aware of those negative thoughts as they enter your head.

Below are a few tactics you can take to spot those thoughts early on.

Anyone who’s worked in the cold calling industry knows there’s plenty of science behind doing the job well. But sellers need more than a spot-on script to keep buyers on the phone. And that’s where the art of cold calling comes in.

When you follow the four tips above, you’ll be well on your way to mastering the art of cold calling. It can take work. And a bit of practice too. But with some persistence, you’ll start capturing more interest, generating more deals, and earning better commissions in no time.

The post Master the Art of Cold Calling: 4 Tips for Boosting Sales appeared first on Salesman.com.