Episode 389: Trust First, Sell Later: New Rules of Social Selling

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

00:00:50:24 – (Brynne Tillman): Welcome back to Making Sales Social. Today, I am so excited to have Brandon Lee as my guest. Brandon is an accomplished entrepreneur and founder of Fist Pump, a modern revenue creation consulting firm that helps businesses tackle the evolving landscape of sales and marketing. With extensive experience launching and scaling companies seven to date with three successful exits, he’s developed a keen understanding of how to navigate today’s challenging sales environment.

00:01:22:12 – (Brynne Tillman): He’s also the host of the highly ranked Mastering Modern Selling podcast, where he shares invaluable insights into social selling. One of my favorites is personal branding and leveraging digital platforms for revenue generation. Brandon’s passion for helping others transform their sales strategies has made him a sought-after consultant, trainer, and speaker. Join me as I dive into his experiences, insights, and action advice on mastering social selling and building a thriving sales pipeline. Brandon, welcome to the show! 

00:01:57:63 – (Brandon Lee): Wow, that was a lot. Thank you for that. And yeah, I’m excited I get to be on your show. You’ve been on my show a couple of times. This is fun. 

00:02:06:47 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m really excited. And the insights that you bring are always brilliant. But before we dive into your genius, we ask all of our guests one question: What does making sales social mean to you?

00:02:21:23 – (Brandon Lee): Yeah, I mean, that is such a great and big question. I think so. My journey in this marketing and outreach.

00:02:30:27 – (Brandon Lee): The World started in the 90s before we had LinkedIn, before we had these digital tools. But I think going all the way back then is totally relevant now. As I have to say, nothing has changed. We just do it differently.

00:02:47:11 – (Brandon Lee): And making sales social is that combination of, I believe, the know, like, and trust is never going away. Buyers still want to buy from people whom they know they like, they trust, and we have to bring our expertise to it. So making it social, I believe, is if we’re talking about LinkedIn and social media, we have to show up with both our business acumen and a bit of our humanity so that they can get to know us, not just know what we know, but to get to know us as a human. And when those two come together, well, there’s an acceleration of conversations and sales opportunities that take place. 

00:03:25:13 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that answer. I mean, I knew I’d love your answer, but I love that answer. That’s awesome. Thank you. So, you know, I really am primarily or most initially intrigued by the fact that you’ve launched several companies and experienced both successes and challenges that you’re very open to talking about.

00:03:56:12 – (Brynne Tillman): So what are some of the key lessons you learned about building your successful go-to-market strategy? And, you know, talk a little bit about, like, your exit strategies and, you know, whatever you want to share around that amazing topic. 

00:04:14:16 – (Brandon Lee): Yeah. You know, I think thanks for that, Brynne. I think, look, there’s we live in this big entrepreneur environment now. And I think when I started my first company in 98, I was 28 years old, I had no idea what I was doing, but I had this vision and, in some ways, it was a lot easier because there wasn’t all this entrepreneur competition. Now we live in this ecosystem where in the 90s, I told people I was starting a company, and they’d be like, oh, my gosh, that’s so cool.

00:04:43:03 – (Brandon Lee): Tell me about it. Like, people wanted to meet with me and learn and support and be a part of it. And it was an innovative thing. It was new. And I think now there are so many. It’s like now you sell somebody, you have a startup, and they’re like, oh, okay, who doesn’t have a who, you know, who doesn’t have a startup?

00:05:00:28 – (Brandon Lee): So I think it’s, you know, what I’ve learned is listening to our market is more important now than ever. Listening to what they want, what they don’t want, what they need, and how they speak is an example. One of the evolutions that we’ve talked about, because I live in a weird world, I work with companies that tend not to have a CMO.

00:05:25:06 – (Brandon Lee): I overlapped with, I say I have one foot in sales and one foot in marketing. We do a lot of content creation, but for the purpose of very structured outreach, to create conversations with clients. And as an example, we’ve talked about a team. I believe a lot of what we do is demand creation, but we’ve also discovered a lot of our clients.

00:05:48:18 – (Brandon Lee): If I say the term demand creation, they go, what? And so listening to them, and they still like the term lead generation. And so we’ve shifted, and we go ahead and use the term lead generation. Even though technically, I think what we do is more the demand creation side. But that’s splitting hairs. So I think the advice I have is to listen and be aware of the changes in the trends, especially around buyers.

00:06:18:27 – (Brandon Lee): We’ve got a lot around buyer behavior. One of the mistakes that I’ve made in life where I learned a lot, my first company had a call center, and a couple of years later, somebody wanted to buy it. We sold it. Second company, big call center. We went from 0 to 18 million in revenue in five years. Private equity came along.

00:06:40:08 – (Brandon Lee): Wanted to buy it. We sold it. Great company later on. Playbook. I’ve done this before. This works. Built it. Call center. Failed. What happened? The buyer’s behavior started to change, and I wasn’t thinking. How were they different? I just came in with, here’s my playbook, here’s what I’ve done. It worked before. But we live in an era where things are changing so quickly that we have to slow down and say, are the premises, the thesis, the beliefs that I have that worked before?

00:07:18:24 – (Brandon Lee): Are they still relevant today? Are they relevant to our buyers? Are they relevant to our industry? Are they still going to work because things are changing so quickly? There’s no guarantee that what you did before is going to work today. 

00:07:33:27 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So I love that. You know what pivot you make of moving forward. I’m curious. 

00:07:42:00 – (Brandon Lee): Yeah. Well, that was the pivot when I started looking at LinkedIn differently. So this is about 2019. The call center didn’t have the traction that it did before. We weren’t getting the return calls. Emails weren’t getting returned. And I was looking at LinkedIn more unfortunately, like a lot of people, it was like a substitute for the phone or a substitute for email.

00:08:07:28 – (Brandon Lee): We were pushing out. We were, you know, we were spamming, we were pitch slapping. We were doing and it just wasn’t getting anywhere. And I’m like, you know what happened? You know, for us, we’re like, oh, we got this great offering. Of course, the people are going to be interested. No. Going back to, you know, my favorite book is still How to Win Friends and Influence People.

00:08:28:12 – (Brandon Lee): And yeah, absolute ultimate classic. The ultimate book. Right. And it’s, you know, the basis is to create interest. You have to give interest. Right. And the best way to be interesting is to be interested. And so often our outreach messages aren’t interesting. They’re self-centered. They’re about us. They’re you know, when you’re outreach only has. Can I get your time to sell you something?

00:08:56:25 – (Brandon Lee): Now we see it differently. But that’s the basis of what we say. Right.

00:09:01:16 –  (Brandon Lee): Can I get your most important?

00:09:04:12 – (Brandon Lee): Yeah. Your most important asset. You have time and spend it on me because I think I have something important to share with you. Like, come on, we’ve got to do better.

00:09:15:22 – (Brandon Lee): And so I think when I saw that when I was doing all that, when I say now is wrong and realized that when I showed up in a room for like a networking event, I learned a new, oh, go be interested in order to be interesting.

00:09:34:01 – (Brandon Lee): I didn’t apply it in our outreach, and I believe that’s the big evolution with outreach, with digital, with social, is that Buyers don’t need sellers for information. They don’t need us for information. We have to figure out a way to position ourselves. So they want us for information. And that’s the process of what we do to be more interesting.

00:10:04:05 – (Brandon Lee): By being interested in that, we use the term how do we create value?

00:10:09:02 – (Brandon Lee): I love the challenge of if we want to be seen as a trusted advisor, then we have to ask ourselves, what’s the trusted advice that we’re giving? Because 99 times out of 100, if you talk to a sales team about what trusted advice they’re giving, it’s always after they get the first call.

00:10:31:16 – (Brandon Lee): Oh, well, when we’re talking to them, I no no no no no, it’s got to be before the first call because you have to be perceived as that trusted advisor before you get the first call in order to give trusted advice. So that’s what I think is the big AH. And what I learned is that I took my existing go-to-market playbook, plopped it in on a new company, and it didn’t work.

00:10:54:06 – (Brandon Lee): And through the pain of failure is where I finally got my like, what is going on here? And that’s when I started asking the right questions and had the AHA moment of going. The buyers changed a bit. If the core buyers are all the same, but the way that they behave has changed and we have to adjust accordingly.

00:11:16:07 – (Brynne Tillman): I love it, yeah, we always say earn the right to get the confirmation. And so I love the idea that in order to be a trusted advisor, you have to show up as a trusted advisor to earn the right to be their trusted advisor. So, I think that’s awesome. You know, we had a conversation today.

00:11:35:03 – (Brynne Tillman): We have an email going out where we’re inviting people to an event, and I kept reading it. I’m like, we’ve got to make a change because it starts with, I’m excited, or we’re excited to invite you. And I’m like, why do they care if I’m excited? I want them excited. And so it’s interesting because that’s kind of that world where you work, right?

00:11:58:11 – (Brynne Tillman): How do you reframe some of that messaging? So it isn’t about me and that I’m excited to invite you, or we’re excited about our new launch, or we’re right. And so I can, so I’m going to ask, this is not meant to be free advice, but I’m asking for free advice. But hopefully it will help others listening. How would you reframe something like that so they can experience what that looks like working with you? Moving from I’m excited to invite you to. 

00:12:21:24 – (Brandon Lee): Yeah, I mean, there are a couple of different ways to do it, but I think the foundation of it is, and it’s simple and very difficult at the same time. We have to get ourselves an understanding, our ideal customer, very, very detailed.

00:12:46:00 – (Brandon Lee): Right. What is it that they need? They want they be struggling with it. And then how do we present things to them that speak to that core? What is it? So as an example, instead of like, we have I do a webinar on, and we have a framework for how to use a LinkedIn live show and podcast for sales outreach.

00:13:09:28 – (Brandon Lee): Most often, when we think of a live show or podcast, we think marketing, and our framework says we go beyond marketing and we go into outreach. How do you do it? So I could say, Brynne, I am so excited to share with you my new webinar, in which case you probably don’t care how excited I am or how much I love it or anything like that.

00:13:33:02 – (Brandon Lee): But the question is always, what is our ideal customer? What do they need to hear? And so that’s where we get into those, those trigger points or what those stresses or those challenges are. So in that case, it might be, are you struggling with creating first conversations with clients? Do you get, you know, do your cold emails get a really low response rate, or are you creating off-conversation?

00:13:59:29 – (Brandon Lee): Is your pipeline empty? Any of those things that pertain to them and the right language of it is, is your pipeline empty? We have this. So this framework that and then talk about your social proof. We have a customer who had a 400% increase in their pipeline and 120% of their revenue in six months. Implementing this framework. We just have to speak in a way that makes them go, I need that instead of them looking at it, going, Do I really want to take my time to pay attention to this?

00:14:35:01 – (Brynne Tillman): Very interesting. So and so my curiosity there is that still pitching too soon? It could. I’m curious. This is not its. Yeah.

00:14:50:21 – (Brynne Tillman): So, could we, like my reaction would be like you know, is your pipeline drying up? Here are three insights if you’d like to learn more. 

00:15:03:34 – (Brandon Lee): Right. Yeah, I agree with you. I think I kind of, I try to say it real quick. I think there are layers of other information or resources that are going out over time before you get to that pitch.

00:15:19:08 – (Brandon Lee): We have experts like you who come on, and then we leverage that. We share a lot of that with our audience of just straight like, we’re sharing this episode with you, because if you’re ugly with these three things, here’s A, B, and C points that were made and of course, we leverage other people’s, credibility like you as our guest.

00:15:48:14 – (Brandon Lee): But a lot of the most of the messages that we send out or lay in that foundation session of giving that value, why could this serve you, how it’s we think of it as bank deposits versus bank withdrawals. Right. So it’s how do we give, how do we give, how do we give.

00:16:07:19 – (Brandon Lee): How do we give before we go and ask for any sort of withdrawal? But that withdrawal still has to be about them, not about how much we love our webinar. We’re so excited to do this one. I don’t care how excited you are. Why should I take my time to pay attention to this? That’s where the messaging is so important.

00:16:29:06 – (Brandon Lee): But I think we could establish our credibility over time by what we give, what we give, and what we give. And then when we have that more direct, hey, we want to move you into something, we can be more direct, but it’s got to be other-oriented. 

00:16:45:29 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love that. That kind of moves me into an area that you talk a lot about, which is buyer experience. So how is the expectation of, you know, we could already kind of touch on this a little bit of buyer’s though? How has that evolved over the years, and what strategies can teams implement to make sure that they are meeting the new buyer expectations? 

00:17:09:15 – (Brandon Lee): Yeah. You know, I think I mean, this is obviously a really complicated topic to take on. I do think that because I constantly go back to how to win friends and influence people, once I read that, it’s like changed everything that I did. And I know there are the layers of complexity of personalities and differences, like sometimes you get on is maybe you get on a Zoom or a team call with somebody, and they just want the facts.

00:17:36:19 – (Brandon Lee): They want to be very focused on what you are offering? Why should I care about it? And then get off the phone. And other people want to be more relational. They want to know who they’re talking to. I think the key there for everybody in sales right now is you’ve got to first know yourself to lead yourself.

00:17:54:13 – (Brandon Lee): You have to know, like, we can’t be the best salesperson to every person we try to talk to. You’ve got all these layers of variables that are there as well. One of the best things that we can do, I believe, is to know ourselves in order to lead ourselves. And then it also helps find the buyers that are best for us.

00:18:15:22 – (Brandon Lee): What I mean by that is that, especially in a social world and I like this. How do we marry our business acumen with our humanity? And I want everyone to hear, I didn’t say personal. It’s your humanity. Think about if you’re at a live networking event. Not every conversation we have there is business. In fact, 80 to 90% of them are not business at all.

00:18:40:07 – (Brandon Lee): What are we doing? We’re starting to lay that foundation to see who we like. Who do we trust? Who do we want to get to know? Who would we be interested in going to a deeper level with? That’s what networking events do. And then we got this LinkedIn tool that’s called a social networking platform, not a social selling platform.

00:19:01:13 – (Brandon Lee): I think the first motion is about the same as that networking side. We’ve got to let people get to know us. We’ve got to get to know them. And that’s where we’re bringing our business acumen, and we’re bringing a bit of our humanity. One of the things that I love, and this is my style, and it works well for me, and I know it doesn’t work well for everybody.

00:19:21:08 – (Brandon Lee): I know that I like to use my LinkedIn live show, my podcast, the content I create to start to create my reputation, that reputation we know our reputation goes before us. The question is, are we stressed strategically about it? Are we influencing it, or is it haphazard? But when that reputation goes before us because of all the content we share, the way that we talk, I want to work on having my industry, the people, my buyers say things like, I see you everywhere and I feel like I already know you because I know if I do that with my social activity, when our outreach activity is asking them to come to a webinar or respond to my voicemail, or respond to an email, or come by our booth or anything like that, they’re much, much more likely to do that because, oh my gosh, I see you everywhere and I feel like I know you and I’ll give you this quick example and then I’ll be quiet. 

00:20:21:74 – (Brynne Tillman): I love this. You’re here to talk. So please.

00:20:22:07 – (Brandon Lee): I had I somebody reaches out to me on LinkedIn. Connection request. He was the owner of a tech company, a Microsoft partner, and we happened to serve a lot of Microsoft partners. And he happened to be in the Atlanta area, where I am. He sent me the connection request. I accepted, and he sent me back. He said, Hey, we’re both owners of companies in the Atlanta market.

00:20:45:12 – (Brandon Lee): Would you like to get together for coffee? I said, Sure, absolutely. We get together for coffee. And the first question I ask him is, I said, so why did you want to meet with me? And he said, well, I bought this company about six months ago, and I’ve been on LinkedIn, and I’m looking around the Microsoft ecosystem, and I look at some of these posts, and like, oh, this Brandon Lee guy commented.

00:21:11:10 – (Brandon Lee): And then I look at another post from someone else in this, Brandon Lee commented on it, and he’s like, and then I started looking at your content, and he goes, you just look like you were really highly involved in the Microsoft ecosystem. That reputation. Basically, I see you everywhere. I feel like I already know you.

00:21:32:15 – (Brandon Lee): And so he reached out to me to meet, have coffee, and now starting down the conversation of serving him in his company. So I think that that’s the social part of sales because. All things being equal, most buyers want to do business with people whom they like to spend time with. Like we got to work, we got to do this thing.

00:21:59:08 – (Brandon Lee): I might as well do it with somebody I enjoy more. And again, it’s all things being equal. Somebody else has a product that blows yours out of the water. They may go with someone else even if they don’t care for them as much. But I think all things being equal, that is a huge advantage. And it’s also the way I prefer to run my companies and do my sales and lead my life, because I have more fun doing it that way. 

00:22:22:17 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh my gosh, I love that so much. That kind of leads us a little bit into your framework. Part of your reputation is the social Selling 2.0 blueprint. Talk a little bit about that.

00:22:22:19 – (Brandon Lee): Yeah. So our framework is actually around it as it’s evolved, especially over the last probably 18 months. You know, if our reputation precedes us and our reputation helps open doors or keeps doors closed, we need to be strategic about it. And we’re where we found is that LinkedIn live show. And the podcast is the foundation of building our reputation because we have an episode strategy.

00:23:08:27 – (Brandon Lee): We have a pre-episode communication strategy, and we have a post-episode communication strategy. So that’s really the framework that we have these three, you know, three legs of a stool episode strategy. Who are your guests? You can be a prospect. Great way to meet prospects. And here’s your difference. Call ring ring. Hey, do you have time for me to sell you something or ring?

00:23:38:15 – (Brandon Lee): Ring ring. Hey, I would love for you to be a guest on our show. Would you be interested just from that initial relationship building? But you can design your show when your episodes are around, bringing prospects to be a guest and share with them. Because we love to talk about ourselves, right? That’s one thing about humans. We love to talk about ourselves.

00:23:57:26 – (Brandon Lee): Another option is to bring your customers as guests. Let them tell your stories and their successes. And then the one like I did with you was we called it our big dog strategy. Bring the big dogs in the industry on as guest and leverage their credibility. Learn from them, bring their expertise to your audience, and use that when you promote your show and tag them.

00:24:21:26 – (Brandon Lee): And it helps, you know, extend your network. And again, if the goal is I see you everywhere, and I feel like I know you, we want to get that additional exposure. Then the second step is the pre-episode strategy. How do we use that episode? We can send emails to our customers in advance and say, Hey, I’m going to have Brynne Tillman on our show next week, and we’re going to talk about these things.

00:24:47:06 – (Brandon Lee): This is how awesome Brynne is. You should come. We’re adding value. We’re being trusted advisors, but we’re not selling. We’re just inviting them. And that’s kind of the pre-show or pre-episode strategy we invite. We do all that. The post-episode strategy is a ton. Like, there’s a lot to do there. We take a 45-minute LinkedIn live show and podcast.

00:25:14:20 – (Brandon Lee): And we create over 28 pieces of content. And we use it in different ways. So here’s one example for this. One is like the easiest and coolest. You do your LinkedIn live show, and people register for it. And we know not everybody comes, but those who register afterwards. I go to the do the event, I click and see everyone that registered, and I go down the list, and if they’re second or third connections, I’m not connected to them.

00:25:44:20 – (Brandon Lee): Oh my gosh, I’m sending them a connection request, and I have something already to talk to them about. Hey, you registered for my show. Thank you so much. I notice we’re not connected. Let’s connect. What did you think of the show? What are future topics you’d want to see if somebody registered their first connection, and they’re a good prospective client?

00:26:05:29 – (Brandon Lee): Send them a message. Thanks for registering for the show. What did you think? Is there something like. It’s just a great way to create ongoing conversation and stay top of mind with people. And really, all we’re doing is adding value with the show. So that framework is there’s an episode strategy, who you bring on as guests, what you talk about, maybe the structure of it, is it conversational, is it interview style?

00:26:32:16 – (Brandon Lee): Is it curated content style, pre-episodes, and post-episodes? How are we doing, or how are we using that entire ecosystem around your show very strategically to meet more of your prospects, build your reputation, and create those conversations? 

00:26:51:74 – (Brynne Tillman): Brilliant, I love that. Thank you so much. So, oh gosh, this time went really, really fast. So my I guess it’s my second-to-last question is what question did I not ask you that I should have?

00:27:06:19 – (Brandon Lee): Yeah, it’s a good I kind of jumped in on the LinkedIn live show. I think the question would be, as I shared that example about me commenting on other people’s posts, and that gentleman going, you just seem very well connected in the ecosystem. So the question would be, what do I think is the most important activity that we could do in social on LinkedIn for sales?

00:27:30:15 – (Brandon Lee): And I think it’s commenting. It’s commenting on other people’s posts. Now, the first pushback people say is, Oh, my prospects don’t publish enough for me to comment. No problem. Who are the people who influence your buyers? The authors, the speakers, the consultants, the business owners? Those people post regularly, right? Brand new post all the time. If I wanted to go, talk to CEOs of companies, I know you have your focus in the banking industry as well.

00:28:02:23 – (Brandon Lee): If I wanted to go meet those folks, why wouldn’t I just go comment on Brian’s post a couple times a week? What’ll happen is your audience will start seeing me associated with you, and I can start creating, sending connection requests, and leverage my relationship with you in order to meet more people. So I think the question is, what do I think is the most strategic activity we can do?

00:28:30:04 – (Brandon Lee): And I think it’s commenting because we then know if I can look and see who’s all engaging with Brynne’s content, and I go comment on her post on a regular basis, I start to become involved in that ecosystem as well. 

00:28:39:19 – (Brynne Tillman): So we call that prospect by influencer. So I love that. Then we’ve got, we have campaigns that are like got my thing right or the campaign.

00:28:53:25 – (Brynne Tillman): So, prospect by interview is on,e prospect by podcast is one. So I love that we are so aligned with so much of that. Well, I am so grateful for your insights. And I’m sure the audience was quickly taking notes. So if folks want to reach out to you, what’s the best way? 

00:29:10:13 – (Brandon Lee): LinkedIn? Yeah, LinkedIn, Brandon Lee, and then, the company is fist bumps.

00:29:16:12 – (Brandon Lee): It’s get fist bumps dot com. But LinkedIn is my go-to. And here’s a challenge I used. So everybody on that. Brynne, I don’t know if you’ve heard me say this before, but am I about section? I mean, I’m the CEO of a company. I get a lot of cold outreach, as I’m sure you do, from most donors.

00:29:34:13 – (Brandon Lee): In my about section? At the very bottom of it, I wrote a message, very strategically, because I work in sales, people always send me stuff. I’m very bottom. I said, if you mention these things, I promise I will respond and give you an opportunity to share with me what you do and in two and a half years of doing that, I’ve only had two people ever respond, replying, you know, mention it, which means most people are sending me messages without ever reading my about section, which is what I wrote about me into the business world.

00:30:09:08 – (Brandon Lee): Don’t you think you should read that before you reach out to somebody and get an understanding of what they say about themselves? If you want to talk about them? 

00:30:18:64 – (Brynne Tillman): So I’m curious because I have a pre-call planning prompt, then I’m going to throw your profile into after this and see if it comes up. Oh, that’d be interesting. Yeah.

00:30:29:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, thank you so much for your insights. I so appreciate you and am grateful to have you as part of my inner network in the social selling world. So. 

00:30:37:88 – (Brandon Lee): Right. Hey, I’ve learned so much from you from a distance for so long. And then as we’ve gotten to know each other, I’m just grateful for your leadership. 

00:30:47:07 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, thank you, and back at you. So I. Yeah, the feeling is mutual. So I love that. And so our listeners, don’t forget when you’re out and about to make your sales social, have a good one.

Outro:

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