The 8 Stages of Rolling Out A Social Selling Program

Listen as Brynne Tillman explains how to use your company’s social platforms as a way to generate valuable leads.

 

Brynne Tillman from The Social Sales Link

Chris: Okay, we are live. Welcome to episode four of Thought Leader Magazine. Today we are extremely blessed to have Brynne Tillman of Social Sales Link. Brynne and I have known each other for several years now. Back in the day before LinkedIn was owned before by Microsoft and you know, many moons ago, our paths crossed and I remember walking away thinking, wow, this is what a thought leader really is. Totally gifted and in her space, doesn’t try to be things that she’s not, doesn’t try to be all things to all people. She is just really, really good at knowing how to basically dominate LinkedIn and other sales training approaches. So, Brynne, welcome to the show.

Brynne: Thanks, Chris. I’m thrilled to be here.

Chris: Yeah. So, I wrote down some of the accolades I could find on you and you’re going to have to correct me if I got some of these wrong. Obviously, the digital world is moving very quickly. So, you know, she is a top LinkedIn influencer and I think she was rated in that in 2016. She’s a contributor to Forbes, a contributor to Salesforce, a contributor to LinkedIn internal, not their internal blog but basically their public-facing blog. She’s a LinkedIn advisor on product development and one of our biggest accolades is in 2018 she was listed as one of the top 10 sales webinars in the world. Is all that true?

Brynne: It’s pretty close. I’m not actually a Forbes contributor, but I have been interviewed by Forbes contributors for their blogs, so I guess I have contributed.

Chris: Okay. Yeah. Well either way that’s really, really, that’s fantastic. and we are really blessed to have you on the show. So, tell me a little bit about your business. Like we, you and I know about our marketing approach, but tell me a little bit about your business, about what you do, how you do it and sort of how you differentiate yourself.

Brynne: Oh, thanks. So, my background was in sales and sales training and I was a sales trainer and partner in a sales training company for years and then I came across this LinkedIn thing and I went, oh my gosh, this is a game changer. So, just reducing the story down to I had an “aha” moment where I’m like, this is all I want to do, I want to help people that are in business development leverage this tool to engage more prospects, nurture more opportunities, and ultimately schedule more sales conversations and so we modeled the whole company around that. So, what I do really, the big picture is we help people through an eight-stage process roll out a LinkedIn and social selling program, whether it’s for an entrepreneur or a Fortune 500 sales team. We will literally customize and develop a program so that the either sales rep or the entrepreneur has all the tools, the templates and the techniques they need to leverage their network for introductions, to be positioned as a thought leader and subject matter expert and to build their database, their email list with targeted buyers, by offering really valuable insights, tips and strategies that move those prospects closer and closer to their solution.

Chris: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. So, one of the things that I recommend you do is we’re going to kind of go over some of those details on this call, but if you are not subscribing to Brynne’s blog, it’s not the average run in the mill blog some 400 words, I don’t even know, like piece of garbage that is basically designed for SEO fuel. It’s literally just some just amazing tips on her blog. It’s one of the regular, I read a lot of different blogs but she’s on the regular for me. I’m going to try to share my screen. I’m using a new piece of technology and it keeps sharing both of our screens. So, I’m hoping to get lucky here and only share one of them. So, give me one second here. I’m going to…

Brynne: Well, I will get on a screen that’s worthy of looking at just in case.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. Give me one second. Now, it’s actually sharing among dual monitors. So, let me see if I can share just one. Let me see if I can share just one. Yeah, it’s sharing both. Let me see here. Yeah, I’m going to have to try this again some other time. Sorry about that.

Brynne: No, I mean, I’m happy to share this screen if…

Chris: Yeah, I don’t know whether, let’s try it. Let’s try it. See if you can share your screen via Skype. Okay. So, you’re in there right now. Okay, great. Now let me see if I can just make you solo here. Give me one second. Okay. Yeah, we are good. Alright. So why don’t you share, I can see your screen now.

Brynne: Terrific. So, do you want to ask around this or?

Chris: Yeah. No, kind of unpack this for us. When we had our preparation, we were talking about the eight critical stages of rolling out, you know, your social selling program and then you were talking about the infographic that you have here and I was wondering whether you could maybe walk through some of those, through the eight pillars here.

Brynne: Yeah, absolutely. So, it’s really important to make sure that if you are going to leverage social selling with the goal of starting more sales conversations that you are behind this and that you roll it out appropriately otherwise you and your sales reps will all be really doing random acts of social instead of purposeful acts and just like any marketing program, any sales program we’ve got to make sure that we have tall he the tools and everything in place, you want to be successful. So, Chris, do you know whenever you start any plan, we’ve got to start with the goals and setting what are our KPIs or key performance indicators? What are the data points that we’re going to measure for success? So, before you start any program, you have to determine what do we want to get out of this? And it could be anything from growing a newsletter, a qualified and targeted post, building a database to set appointments with your targeted buyers.

But whatever those are, we’ve got to determine what are our measuring points and there’s results data points and there’s activity data points. So, results we actually can’t control. This one I want three new qualified conversations a week and so, what do you mean you can’t control that? Well, it’s a results goal. The only thing you can control is the activity that gets you to that result. So, we want to have those results goals but we also want to have, maybe we recognize that in order for us to have three conversations, we need to be at 10 introductions from our warm network, our clients, our centers of influence in order to get the three phone calls, whatever that might look like and there’s a, you know, a hundred ways to get there but you want to make sure that you’ve got that established.

The other thing is you’ve got to map your buyers. So, this is like the persona but based on LinkedIn filters. So exactly who is it we’re going after? And by identifying that, we can then find more of the right people. Often, we will break down the ideal client and all of the influencers and the stakeholders that were present and active in the sales process all the way from the first touch to installation and even beyond the end user. So, we can map these buyers the right way, we will then make it much simpler for us to find out who in our network can help us gain access to them.

Next, select the tool stack. So, we don’t have a spot as one of the greatest central selling tool stack, tools in your stack. Like, from landing page to outreach to, I mean in a million different ways that we can use it, that’s one of the tools. Other tools I like and actually that HubSpot has their own very Calendly, which is a big calendar syncing tool where people can go to a link and schedule a call with you. Another tool I use every single day is Grammarly. If you’re going to write anywhere public, you want to make sure you’ve got your commas in the right places. So, you’ve got to figure out is Twitter, part of your tool stack. What are we using? Do you have an employee advocacy tool where you are curating the content for your team which actually goes right now to develop the strategy?

So, there’s curating content and there’s original content and as a company, you’ve got to determine what am I curating in sharing and what am I originating and what kind of content, what landing pages do I have that convert? What is that strategy? And then how am I taking that right about now and building the custom playbook and using those insights in that content to attract teach and engage my ideal buyers.

So, now we put together really a pretty easy to follow those steps on what to do, how to connect, how to ask for warm introductions, how to get client referrals and use those insights to really draw in the right buyers and get them really interested to take your call. We talked about this, starting more conversations and leveraging LinkedIn. Well, we need to make sure that we heard them right, so we can get introductions all day long. We can connect with all new people all day long, but we don’t earn the right to get 15 minutes with them. They’re not going to schedule with us and so, it’s really important that we’ve got that mix down.

We’ve got value-centric profiles. This is moving your profile from a resume to a resource. We’re not using this to find a job, we need to use this to attract, teach and engage our buyers and it starts with our profile. Corporate visions has a stat that 74% of buyers choose the sales rep that was first to offer insights and value. So, we might as well start with our profile wound first connecting with them.

Then, of course, there’s training and measuring and ongoing coaching that people have done with you so that you know, guidance so that, you know, there’s helping, really getting into those accounts, making sure that we socially surround the right people inside of an organization and truly leverage the impact.

Chris: Oh, that’s great. Now tell me a little bit about, give me like a run of the mill scenario here. So, I’ve established my KPIs and mapped out my buyers and stuff like that. I’ve got a pretty good, I had some pretty good tools set in place, right? So, I go, and I reach out through your program to potential targets. What does it look like on the other side? And you know, how do you make it not look like it’s spam, you know, I’m not trying to downgrade what that…

Brynne: I love that question. So, number one is this is about relationship building. I did, you know, when people talk about using LinkedIn for lead generation, it kind of roll my eyes a little bit, because when you talk about lead generation with LinkedIn, it’s about automation or mass outreach. Our Social Sales Link way is really about leveraging insights that are relevant to the market. So, let’s go into the prospecting side for a moment, the sales side of LinkedIn. It is not just about connecting and pitching, connecting and pitching. You’ll fail. People will ignore you and the first impression that you’re giving them is that you’re all about sales and you’ve brought no value. Based on the fact that 74% of buyers choose the sales rep that brought value, that is the direction that we need to go in at every stage. So, the first piece of value is from introduction for permission to name drop a shared connection. It is absolutely vital for a really strong social selling program. So, this is about identifying who in your network knows you’re targeted by a hire and leveraging that relationship through conversation to either get a warm introduction or get their permission to mention that you are a shared connection and that they thought you should introduce yourself.

Chris: Okay. So, do me a favor, can you un-share your screen? Just go back to the,

Brynne: Yeah.

Chris: So, basically what you’ve done here is you’re trying to use your most powerful asset which basically is that introduction right. Meaning, so I totally, I totally get that. Now, one of the things that I sort of have a question is, is that so on the other side, are you just literally, so if I get an email introduction from somebody, I usually just go right into, hey, how can I help you? Now, there’s usually a little bit of intent there that’s a little bit different than in the LinkedIn world. My point is that email introductions and LinkedIn introductions can sometimes feel different. So, is there a different tone you take on LinkedIn as opposed to, another is they don’t entirely see you coming on LinkedIn? We’re on, maybe they do on email, but I guess my point is, is that, is your approach any different from LinkedIn than if I gave you the same introduction via email or is it the same?

Brynne: It’s actually the same, it’s the same person on the other side.

Chris: Okay.

Brynne: So, it’s the same interaction. In fact, I had a lot of clients that don’t actually get the introduction on LinkedIn, they request it in an email.

Chris: Okay.

Brynne: So, the key in LinkedIn is you can search and filter your connections, connections.

Chris: Okay.

Brynne: That’s where the magic is. You start to identify. So, for example, if I have a client that we just had great success stories with, this is a perfect time to ask for a referral, but the traditional salesperson will say, you know, Chris, I really enjoyed launching this program with you. It really rolled out perfectly. It looks like everything is going smoothly and I’m really thrilled. I don’t know if you know this but the way that I grow my business has traditionally been from referrals from my happy clients. Can I ask you who do you know that could use my products and services in the same way you have? And Chris, you know what a typical client will say, they’ll say, you know, this has been a great experience and I really appreciate it. I can’t think of anyone right now that I can introduce you to but if anyone should ask I’d be very happy to refer you. And so, we’re asking for referrals, but we’re not always getting, in fact, we’re rarely getting them that way. Let’s put a little LinkedIn into the mix and before I meet you, Chris, I go to your LinkedIn. I put in my buyer mapping, my search criteria and I identify the 23 people that you know, that meet the exact criteria to the people I want to meet. And so now the conversation is Chris loved working with you. I don’t know if you know this but the way that I built my business has been from referrals from my happy clients and I don’t know, I hope you don’t mind but I noticed on LinkedIn your connected to 23 people on LinkedIn that I’m trying to get in front. Can I run these names by you?

Chris: That’s cool.

Brynne: We have a conversation and 23 maybe four or five targeted people that my client said these would be good for you.

Chris: Wow. Yeah. That’s really cool. That’s really cool. Yeah. So, tell me a little bit about, so we know, we’ve identified the process, we’re looking through the eight steps were identifying that process. We’re trying to keep the same mind frame as we were before, like in other words as if it was the standard email introduction and stuff like that. Do you have like an approach after that about what’s the process look like after that? Is it you just take it where you need to go with it? Or is there like, I guess my, I guess my point is that LinkedIn messages…

Brynne: You’ve got to have to production.

Chris: And they’re in there in LinkedIn messages which are always checked at the same rate that email. So, what do you do about that?

Brynne: Well, depending on what the email is. I mean maybe not getting an email saying that this message did come through.

Chris: Okay.

Brynne: So, it would bring them back and sometimes it’s their Gmail, they’re not checking it as frequently. So, that’s a valid question. But at this point, you know, we’ve also sent a connection request. So, “Fred, I’d love to connect. Chris just made an introduction for us and I am looking forward to having a conversation.” So now they get the reply. So, Chris, you make the introduction reply, “Chris, thanks so much for the introduction, Fred. I’m looking forward to having a conversation. I’ll send out a connection request and to make things easier, here’s a link to my calendar. Pick a time that works best for you.” I had an assumption that because we’ve talked through this guy, you said Fred will take your call. I think it’s great. We’ve worded the introduction, we can talk about that, but we’ve worded the introduction in a way that, you know, Chris, when you made this introduction, you know, I don’t know if you’re exploring solutions, but either way it brings you some great insights that can bring value to your company and any initiatives you have around x, y, and z.

Chris: Sure.

Brynne: So, now because it’s been set up to be an insights call that’s got to be the call.

Chris: Okay.

Brynne: I’m happy to talk through the formula of that call but it’s not a complete discovery call. Its discovery-ish, but every time you ask a question you have to offer value and insight.

Chris: Okay.

Brynne: And I have a whole formula on how to run that first call. But the goal of that first call, well, I’ll shorten it. You get on the call, you thank them, say other than Chris asking you to connect with me, is there anything specific you were hoping we were going to talk about and they’re either going to say yes or no. Yes, you follow their path, right. “Yeah, it’s a coincidence, currently we’re searching social signed solutions,” and we’re going down a path. But if they say no, you know, “Chris is a great guy. He’s been a wonderful resource. If he thinks that you can offer insights, I’m happy to chat” great, and that’s the direction, and that’s the path. 90% of the calls go that way.

Chris: Okay

Brynne: So, now when we lead down that path it’s like, well, you know, “Based on Chris’s introduction, you know, I’ve offered some insights and I’d love to, if you’re okay with this, ask you a couple of questions that when I do offer some value that’s specific to your environment. Is that okay?” And now I am prepared with three questions and three insights. So, I may say “So Chris, I know that you’ve got a pretty strong sales team. Do you have an idea of how many of them are getting more introductions from their clients? Are they leveraging their client relationships to get more introductions?” and then you’re going to say, you know, I don’t know. And I can say, “Well here’s something that you can run past them in your next sales meeting that can really have an impact.” Then I’ll go through what I just said, search their connections pull out 23 names.

Chris: Sure.

Brynne: That’s real insight and they go, wow, did I just provide them value. Even if they never talk to me again. Then I’ll move to the next call and the next question and then an insight and I’m prepared. It’s almost always the same insight on every call but I’m prepared. Sometimes it changes and you have to be ready for that but mostly it doesn’t and then I recap. Remember the traditional sales training, tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them. So now you go okay here’s your homework. We just went through three things. Here are the things you’re going to do. All three of them had nothing to do with hiring these directly, but it leads to me, so he might now say “now these were really great, I’m going to run these past my sales guys “and then the sales guys “go we want more, what do we say.”

Chris: Got you.

Brynne: They come back but the close of my call is you know Chris or Fred or whoever I’m talking to. So, you know, Chris, listening to some of what you shared with me today reminds me of a client that I had a few months ago. This was their situation. Can I share with you what we did with them that really had an impact? And so that’s how we bridge the insight call. So, it’s like a soft into sales by offering a case study.

Chris: Okay. That makes sense.

Brynne: Now, the key is you have to ask permission to do that where they feel like it was a bait and switch. But if you get their permission it’s a huge win, now they are at the edge of the seat waiting to hear what did you do for them.

Chris: Got you.

Brynne: And then they feel FOMO. I want that.

Chris: Yeah, sure, sure.

Brynne: “Please so tell me how can we work with you? What will that look like or what does an engagement look like?” And you’re like well that was easy because to them it really provided value.

Chris: That makes sense. That makes sense. Now just give me a garden variety of what kind of results are you getting? So, we talked about a case study and stuff like that. I’ve been through the eight steps and I got to say that it works if you work it. What I mean by that is that so many people are so anxious to get to the results that I think that they really don’t take the time and energy, in the beginning, to set up and get it correctly. So, you set up the system and it’s not leading to anything really powerful. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? And so,

Brynne: Yeah. Go ahead.

Chris: Yeah. And so, my question is if someone goes and they make that really big investment and set it up the right way and I know it changes for a variety of different industries but I’m just wondering, when you’ve implemented your plan, what are some of the success stories that you sort of have and like what are expectations that individuals should have if they commit to basically doing this process?

Brynne: Great question. So, it really, you got to start with your goal. So, I have one client whose goal was to get in front of as many realtors in a particular area as possible and they really wanted to build that, they invested in a HubSpot tape thing and they had, for the size company they were, they really didn’t have a solid list of, they had clients on the list and they wanted referral partners, which in this case were realtors. So, that was their goal and so, we set up a program where their sales reps were getting introductions to realtors, they were offering some great insights on some alternative funding which just brings value to that realtor when they’re stopped and although it was when they connected with them that they sent them to a landing page with an incredible “How to Handle Your Client That Gets Turned Down for a Mortgage,” kind of thing.

Chris: Sure.

Brynne: It was amazing content so in a few months’ time doubled their email subscribership and now they’re dripping onto these realtors’ content.

Chris: Yep.

Brynne: There’s no question over time and when they get a client that’s declined that they’re going to go to the place that really provided some value.

Chris: Got you.

Brynne: That was their goal. And so they want calls would be realtors and they would get calls with realtors but what they really wanted because they could have a call with a realtor, but that realtor may not have a prospect at the time, so they needed that nurture. There was no way one called was going to do it.

Chris: Yeah. Sure.

Brynne: So, they needed to nurture. I have another client that wanted their reps to have three ideas, as an example, they wanted them to three prospecting calls with a targeted audience every single week. So, we recognized that they needed to go out and they needed to get 10 introductions which means they had to ask for 20.

Chris: Sure.

Brynne: So, you did the math and we figured it out and so, they needed to ask for four introductions a day, 20 a week.

Chris: Okay.

Brynne: There are three targeted phone calls and then it’s up for sales trainer to convert those, but we take them into “yes, I’m interested in learning about their product or service.” We’ll get them to that point. So, there’s some real power in that and so what are the expectations? I will say no, we asked for 20, we get 10, we talked to three. That means there are seven more that you connected to on LinkedIn that didn’t take your call this week.

Chris: Sure.

Brynne: Or next week’s but they’re targeted and they’re probably the right buyer at the wrong time.

Chris: That’s life and sure.

Brynne: So, so now what we expect is, and I did a graphic on this somewhere that did very well. I think it went a little bit viral, but we expect it to be linear. We expect it to be, we get an introduction, they connect with us, they take our call, we bring in, we put out a proposal, we negotiate their new client. That’s what we want it to be but what it really looks like generally and we’re getting some like that, a few, but the majority of the folks, you get the introduction, you connect and converse a little bit online, you provide some insights, they sign up, they download, whatever it is that they need to get into your email- 80 emails get sent out and on number nine they open it right, now you get a little bit of, they opened it, finally, they opened something. So, now you reach back out to them and they ignore you and then you send a follow-up piece of content and they thank you for that content but not take your call. However, when your solution becomes a priority inside of their business, you’re the first one they call, right? And so, it’s more like a web, right versus linear, and so that’s where the content on social is idle because if we are not nurturing them with thought leadership proving our subject matter expertise, bringing them real value, then they’re not going to call us first. They’re going to actually go out to the marketplace, Google and start searching and doing their own. They’re self-educating. instead of saying, “I’ve got a resource, I’ve got someone that’s really been sharing some great content for a long time. Let me reach out to her first.”

Chris: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. And that’s one of the things, well, I’ll comment on the one thing that you made, and we do this lot of times in our discovery process is, is that sometimes we’ll say, let’s just pretend like it’s just web visitors, right? It’s like how many web visitors become a lead and then how many leads become a sale. Therefore, if I get enough web visitors, I get enough sales. Does that make sense? But I think that, that is like this very easy way of communicating it, but I don’t find that it’s always accurate and what I mean by that is that the quality level of a target that comes from the web, if they get to your website and you don’t have something to quality behind it, when they get to that experience, like honestly, it’s like where you hold value where you have value. And so, what I see companies do is, is that they’re so anxious to get to the result that they don’t really take the time to basically say, you know what I’m going to bring value. And there is just so much noise out there right now. There’s content writers writing like at full speed, you know what I mean? At one point in 2016, our company was pumping out a thousand blogs a month for our clients.

Brynne: Wow.

Chris: A thousand. Think about all of that, just stuff that’s just out there. It’s like literally you’re like a needle in a stack of needles and then you’ll have other individuals that will write maybe one piece a month maybe. How many pieces are you doing? Are you doing want a week or how many do you do in a month?

Brynne: I do one a month, but there’s five of them as each of us, we do one a month.

Chris: Okay. Okay. Yes,

Brynne: We have others too. What I do though is I write one blog and then I have about nine things that come from that one blog for a month.

Chris: Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s a good idea. But what I was finding is, is that people were committed to the hunt but not committed to the value, and so it’s almost like they’re anxious to go out and start hunting but their arrows have no point.

Brynne: I had someone tell me, it’s a little graphic but I had someone say it’s like going out hunting for deer with a machine gun. By the time you get to the meat, it’s inedible.

Chris: Yes, I would completely agree.

Brynne: Yeah. It’s a little graphic

Chris: Yeah. Sure.

Brynne: So, that’s why I really do focus on one valuable piece a month and we do have them coming out of a little more than every week. We do have a new piece of content that comes out, but we’ll do a webinar around a blog post. We will do little mini videos. We’ll do a couple of which live video tips like, “We wrote a blog last week on X, Y, and Z and one major tip-”, you know, and I just do that line and then we use Canva to create little images with a quote that comes from that and then we have a question about how someone would handle that situation and then in comments, we have a link back to the post. So, that’s really important in the nurturing of your prospects and the key is and you said this, there’s so much noise out there. If your prospect clicks through an average piece of content, they’re not going to click through the next time. So, I have a client that sells into CIOs and CTOs and CSOs, high-level tech people and they were sending out low level, loud thought leadership that the college kids knew about like, Three Things To Do with Cloud Security,” and it’s like things that you can Google. Where do you make an impact?

So, there’s a few things you have to think about with that content and Chris you know this, but you have to think number one, am I going to create an “aha” moment. If I’m not going to create an “aha” moment, it’s not an insight, it’s just noise. Number two, am I talking to them at this stage before they hire me? So, I had one client that was sharing a ton of content that by the time someone was interested in that they’d already hired someone else. When you think about creating content for social, it’s got to be the stage before they hire you. You need to be educating them on what to do both or are they pick their vendor.

Chris: Sure.

Brynne: Otherwise you’re just helping them to succeed with the other vendor they’ve picked

Chris: Got you.

Brynne: And that’s really important and the third thing you need to do is you need to capture who’s reading it. And so, a lot of people say, I mean I have a lot of free content that then leads to gated content and you don’t have gated content, you will never monetize your content. It’s so difficult. So those are the three elements I think they’re absolutely essential to really having an impact and attracting the right people at the right time.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a really great point and you know, what’s so funny, is that you know, we do a ton of that gated content and what happens is, is that people are like, oh, I never fill out that I never fill out, I basically never give my contact information in exchange for like a content piece. I was just saying, I say to them every time I was like, you are literally, the golden age of free content is over. There’s so much value for companies like me and the companies that I serve to basically gate their content that, you know what I mean, if you’re getting it for free there’s a whole world on the other side of the gate that you’re just not even exposed to because we help companies basically really develop a pathway to generate leads and to nurture leads and then convert leads but in that process, we don’t give away the golden goose for free. We literally say, you know what? We want to provide you a lot of value but in exchange for that value, we want to get to know you and we want to unpack this and customize it right for you. And so, if you don’t gate it, you’re not getting their contact information, you’re not getting any lead intelligence on them and it’s just, I don’t know how to describe it. You can know at the most general sense how your Google analytics are saying how traffic is working but on a person to person basis it’s impossible.

Brynne: Well, I mean Hubspot site does this but they’re in your system and when they visit your website you get notified.

Chris: Yup. That they’re there.

Brynne: Total magic. So, here’s the thing when they do that, and you get notified, go connect with them on LinkedIn.

Chris: Yeah.

Brynne: Go in and say…People know that this is happening, right? They know, you download something., you know someone is looking at that. So, be prepared if someone downloads something to reach out on LinkedIn and you know, “Chris thanks so much for downloading the eBook on our website. I thought I’d share this other piece of content,” now ungated. So, “I want to share this other piece of content that I thought would be of value link., let’s connect.”

Chris: Sure.

Brynne: So, I cannot believe the amount of leads that are coming into email and no one thinks, “well maybe I’ll connect with them personally,” and so, it blows my mind how many opportunities are taking much longer because they’re getting a drip campaign, which is important. I’m not saying that it’s not, but we speed up the process by looking at that, instead of waiting until they get their score and a certain number. If they download something, you check them out on LinkedIn and they match your criteria, connect, start to build a relationship with them. The drip campaign can do its own thing and that’s fine in that whole nurture thing and that’s like the web, but make sure that you as a person are showing up there. It a game changer and it speeds up the process.

Chris: Yeah. Sure. Well, we’re getting close to the end here. What I wanted to do was ask you one last thing. LinkedIn has changed like a thousand times in the last six years.

Brynne: And it’s changing again soon.

Chris: Yeah. There you go. What changes do you see coming down the pike and are they making it, I don’t know how to describe it. Are they making it easier for people to succeed or harder for people to succeed? What do you find? What are you seeing?

Brynne: Both.

Chris: Okay.

Brynne: So, start with the good stuff. Live video is coming. It’s in beta right now.

Chris: Okay.

Brynne: Live streaming right now if you made a video, if you create a video and it uploads. Live streaming is coming for both individuals and of off company pages and I think that’s really cool.

Chris: Yeah. I think that’s cool.

Brynne: So, I love that. Sales Navigator has a bunch of things that are happening that is the premium for salespeople. They have an enterprise for larger companies and there is a really big magic piece that I’m seeing roll out that I’m very excited about. Your, in Sales Navigator, your sales reps can save needs in certain categories. So, you can save them as a prospect, you can save them as a competitor, you can save them as a current client, and you categorize them, and they’re saved. Now LinkedIn ads has a program that will read your sales reps’ sales saved searches in the prospecting category and be able to advertise to those specific people.

Chris: Wow.

Brynne: That’s mind-blowing to me. It’s not a persona anymore. If you have a hundred reps, and each of them have saved a hundred prospects, 100% of your ad spend is going to the exact people that your prospects want to engage with. This is mind-blowing.

Chris: Yeah. That’s incredible. When do you think that’ll roll out?

Brynne: Well, it has rolled out to some enterprise companies, so I don’t want to officially say it’s Beta. I don’t know exactly where it is. It feels like Beta. So, I think it’s, and I hear it’s working great. So, I think for the bigger companies, they’re testing it and it should be soon.

Chris: Wow, that’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Brynne: I think that’s huge. It’s a game changer, hands down. I mean even if it’s inviting them to webinars, you get, you started to get engaged. I’m very excited about that. I think that’s amazing. The stuff I don’t like and they’re going to say, well, you have to pander to the millennials is like the new or rolling out, new emoji thing. So, if you share a picture you can put stickers on it or if you’re, it’s like curious insight, there’s images and it’s not saying, I just like something, I love it. It’s very insightful but they are the cartoons and I’m like, no, don’t do this to my B2B platform. Please. There’s a place for these things and maybe on Facebook, but there’s a place for that and this isn’t it. Yeah, go ahead.

Chris: No, no. I mean that’s, that’s exactly how I’d put it. It’s like there’s a place for it and I don’t know, it’s weird. It’s, I guess you’d say is, I’m just not surprised.

Brynne: Well, you know, in their own audit issues with LinkedIn, there are a lot of glitches and broken things that I really wish they’d put the resources and energy into because if we could fix some of that stuff. I mean the reason, if there is a challenge, it’s based on some broken stuff inside of LinkedIn. I have people that messaged me at least a couple of times a month saying, “I can’t message my first-degree connections. I don’t know what’s happening.” Like that’s a lot. When you’re a company owned by Microsoft, could you imagine if your Word doc didn’t work right?

Chris: Yeah.

Brynne: A lot of the time, you say great. This is now Microsoft, they paid $26 million. The platform should be working. So, in my opinion, they should focus on fixing glitches.

Chris: Or your mailman can’t deliver to the people in your family. Only to strangers.

Brynne: You get some weird stuff that happens. Like, for example, for me when I accept a connection request and I go to send a message, it says you can’t at that time. You can’t send a message to them because they’re not a first-degree connection. Well, they are and it takes a good 30 seconds to catch up to that. But I have 40 connections that I want to accept, send a messenger, accept send a message. Now I have to accept, accept, accept and then go back to send the message because of the delay is so bad.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. That’s tough.

Brynne: Stuff like that but there is no better prospect tool in the world in my opinion. So, I just would like them to work on fixing. They did launch events again, which is pretty good and so they the other good thing, it’s only, well no I think it’s on desktop now. I was a part of the, the advising on the ideas around the events. They’re trying to relaunch groups. I was an advisor on that, but they didn’t listen to a thing. I said. Now, hopefully they will. So, there’s some really great opportunity out there. I just want them just stick to the B2B space and the moment I see a cat videos, I will literally break down in tears.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah.

Brynne: But I’ll watch them on Facebook.

Chris: You can tell me how, we do this service for our clients using LinkedIn and you can tell me whether you’d love it, hate it, or would do it differently and then we’ll close out is that what we do is, there’s a lot of our clients that they’d love to do LinkedIn if they just had the time. But what we do is we help them with their connection requests, but we take a snapshot in theory, I’m going to use the word snapshot of their connections, say it’s January 1st and then on April 15th we look at it again and what we’re looking for are people that are changing jobs. The reason why we liked that so much is that there’s so many times that you’ve gone and you’ve sold a certain target at one company and as soon as they go to the next company, they have the same job, but they just have a different company that they’re doing it for. And so, the level of trust, which is probably one of the most critical part of sales is already established and you’re able to resell them again now that they’re at the new company. And so, we basically, what we try to do is give them like a formal like welcome basket that basically says, “Hey, welcome to your new job. We want to be the first people to congratulate you, etc. etc.” You know what I mean? What do you think about ideas like that?

Brynne: Well, so a couple of things. One, you’re notified every day of who job changes, and so we have our clients do that.

Chris: Yup.

Brynne: And so, we have our clients do that. Every single day we have them looking at connections and you can click through job changes. Sometimes they are promotions, sometimes they have switched companies. You have two opportunities. So, you have the opportunity that they’re in a new company but there’s also someone else filling that other opportunity. So, there’s something. If they are not a client yet there’s an opportunity in there. If they were a client. You better get busy securing everyone around to make sure that the value that they’ve brought, they’re going to have their own vendor that they’re going to want to use.

Chris: Yeah. Yep.

Brynne: And actually, we each teach prior to that how to you socially surround- you know, there’s a 20% turnover on average every year. That means one out of five of your contacts in your client list leaving each year.

Chris: Yeah, that’s crazy.

Brynne: So, you’ve got a socially surrounding everyone in that organization so that you solidify your position so, when there is a change, they love you more than just your one champion internally. But I’m a huge fan and reaching out to those in positions with, you know, I’ve messaging for all different industries, but essentially if you can put together a piece of content based on whatever your solution is with the, you know, The Five Things A New Chief Marketing Officer Should Do To Do Ads. And so, I congratulate them because of the new job- “A few months back we posted a blog post that helps onboard CMOs a and I thought I’d share it with you,” and that’s it. Don’t sell! You can always say, “yes, if you have any questions I’m always happy to jump on a call,” or whatever that looks like. But just bring value and they will come into you. Or you can always offer they jump on an insights call but if you pitch without having a conversation either online or offline, they’re going to run. They are not going to take your call if you are trying to pitch so soon. Nobody wants that.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever read the” Little Red Book of Selling” with Jeffrey Gitomer?

Brynne: Jeffrey Gitomer was my favorite. So the Little Black Book of Networking I think that that was my first book, and I went to his training here in Philadelphia.

Chris: Oh Wow.

Brynne: Yeah. And, and he pulled me up on stage and I did a little podcast from the with, it’s really, really fun. Bucket List, check.

Chris: Oh my gosh yeah.

Brynne: Now if we took Jeffrey Gitomer and Jennifer Gluckow and did a podcast- incredible! His audience, major bucket list check.

Chris: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah. I was bringing it up because he has this phrase and I tried to use it a lot. It’s like, “No one ever likes to be sold, but they do love to buy.” And so, you know what I mean?, if you go and you sell, like you said, they will run for the hills, but if you just bring value, you inform them and stuff like that. Literally as you as you are leaving, they’re like, whoa, well hold up, hold up, hold up. I’ve seen it a million times, you know what I mean? So, I’m` in agreement with you. It’s just like bring value and they’ll let the chips fall where they may. I built this business where nearly 50 employees, between full time and some contracts, but I’m a terrible salesperson. All I really do is just tell the new and innovative things that your company could or should be doing and somehow they go, they’re like, that’s a great idea. But like,

Brynne: My new favorite line and I’m playing it out, tell me what you think.

Chris: Yeah.

Brynne: Give them so much value that your prospect’s cold call you.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah, for real. I mean it works. I mean, I like it. I like it. So, cool. So, I am not going to be able to share my screen. I was going to be doing my marketing minute but what I’m going to do is I’m going to talk to you about a new blog I’m going to be writing and then you and I can help brainstorm together and then if I like some of the things you say, I’ll link in the blog and I’ll include you in the blog.

So, I have this thing this blog that I’m going to be writing for Thought Leader Magazine and basically the idea is they always say leaders are readers. But my vantage point is, is that I believe that if you read a little bit less and studied a little bit more that you would actually gain, basically you would benefit more from reading less and what I mean by that is, is that I have a brother-in-law, and he kills literally a book a week and he’s phenomenal. He’s just really, really smart. But he’s probably retaining about 10% of what he’s studying. And you know what, I can’t fault him because he’s doing so much more than anybody else. But like one of the things that I’ve sort of concentrated on this year is, well let me give you one other piece of context is I live an hour away from my office and so, I spend two hours a day or one week a month in the car. And so, I don’t listen to the radio and I just kill audiobooks. But one of the things that I’m doing is like, I have this like death by ideas. What I’d much rather do is just slow down just a little bit and basically concentrate on maybe three to five really great books a year, but like own every piece of them rather than being so anxious to get to the new book because I can say, oh, I read that you know what I mean? So, you have any experience with that? Like if you have that like death by idea type concept?

Brynne: Well, I’m the media podcast listener. So, I do some books by audio. I will say, and I was charged with this. So, I, oh gosh, probably seven years ago, maybe 2011, which is now eight years ago, something like that Aramark hired me. It’s a longer story than that and handed me “The Challenger,” the book, you know, and said, “we just had training on this,” and when we said to them, “what’s the next step?” they said, go get LinkedIn training and so it’s a long story around that, but I ended up landing the account and he said, go learn this and create a program and I said, can I keep the program? They’re like, “yeah sure we don’t care.” Great. So, I started to read “The Challenger” and it’s a hard read. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried. It’s dry. Brilliant.

So, I did, and I bought it on audio and I could listen to little chunks that moved me over and over again. So, it might’ve been three minute chunk of brilliance, like absolute, hands down “oh my God moments” of this is life changing and I know how to take this. My goal was to take this and convert it to a LinkedIn activity. And so, I spent about three weeks doing that with “The Challenger.” Then when “The Challenge Customer” came out it was so much better read, but I did the same thing. And so, for me, when I dive into that, I’ll listen to a lot and then when something catches me, like I listen to “Sell or Die” which is Jeffrey Gitomer’s and Jennifer Gluckow’s podcast which, it is so much fun and every once in a while I’ll have someone on, or Jeffery will say something, or Jennifer will say something and it’s like this “aha” moment and then I listen to it again and again and everything else around it I ignore.

Chris: Sure.

Brynne: And I take that nugget and I go, “That’s brilliant. How do I LinkedIn-ize it?

Chris: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Brynne: So, I take that and bring that to my clients.

Chris: Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Yeah, I mean like that’s one of those things, you know, other parts of the blog that I was just thinking about is like they say like basically how water dies is, that when water comes in and it stagnates and a pool, but it doesn’t flow out that basically the water basically dies and decays and so, one of the things that I recommend that you do is, is that if you would read less, you absorb what you do read, but you have to teach it in one way, shape, or form, which basically means you’ve got to write a blog about it. You got to make a podcast about it. You’ve got to be on a video about it, you’ve got to do something about it to keep the flow from the knowledge of where you got it. It comes into your system and you LinkedIn-ize it and then you give it out to the world. But, unless you’re an idiot or unprepared fool, you got to know it well enough to teach it. And so, therefore that process forces you, it’s like literally like throwing yourself in the deep end, you know what I mean? So, that’s one of the things that I find that I want to do is, is force myself to teach more because if I have to teach more, I have to learn more.

Brynne: Alright. Yeah, and I’m constantly trying something new, learning something, adding it, maybe saying yup.

Chris: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well listen, Brynne, I could talk to you for hours. I think we’re kindred spirits. Yeah. This is really great and so, to my listeners, how do they find out about you and your services? Where would they go?

Brynne: Well, currently I’m the only Brynne Tillman on LinkedIn, B, r, y, n, n, e, Tillman, T, i, l, l, m, a, n. socialsaleslink.com is my website and just let me know that are a Farotech or Chris listener and I’ll send some excellent resources.

Chris: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, we’ve invited Brynne to be part of Thought Leader Magazine and we’re hoping that if we can get this to work out, that you’ll be seeing a whole lot more of her. I think she brings a ton of value to our listeners and we’re really excited about what’s possible. So, this is really great. So, thank you so much for your time and, I’m hoping this is going to be the first of many conversations that we get to have on Thought Leader Magazine.

Brynne: I think it’s awesome, this is my job. This is a wonderful life.

Chris: Awesome. Hey, thanks again. Bye. Bye.

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