Episode 498: Stop the Connect and Pitch: Start Earning Conversations

Brynne Tillman  00:00

So sales people obviously look at LinkedIn as a lead gen tool, and that’s where they go wrong, right? This is not a list that you buy and burn through hoping and praying someone responds. This is really about building rapport, providing real value, and ultimately creating conversations because you’ve earned the right, as Bob said.

Intro  00:24

Welcome to the making sales social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing and business. Join Brynne Tillman, Stan Robinson Jr, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies Our guests are teaching and using so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Brynne, welcome to the show. 

Bob Woods 50:00

Hey there, sup and thanks for joining us, for making sales social. Excuse me, coming to you from the social sales. Link virtual studios. I’m Bob Woods. Dan Robinson Jr is off, but Brynne Tillman is in Brynne, why don’t you say how you’re doing while I get this frog out of my throat real quick.

Brynne Tillman  01:07

Ah, I am doing great. Thanks for asking. I’m very excited. On a personal, professional note, I’m headed to New York City tonight to meet one of our longtime members, who is in visiting her daughter from Canada, and very, very excited to have dinner with someone I already adore, but never met in person, and we’ve been working with her for five or six years. So yeah, very excited. 

Bob Woods  01:39

Yeah, so that’ll entail a conversation which actually gets us into our topic today, which is about earning conversations, and I do mean earning them. So for years now, we’ve been saying connect and pitch is a bait and switch. Because, of course, that’s exactly what it is. Even today, though, we all get bombarded with connection requests that once we’ve accepted them, lead right to a sales pitch from your newly minted connection. That’s frustrating. Am I right? 

Brynne Tillman  02:02

Yes, you’re right.

Bob Woods  02:03

Thank you. I appreciate that. So these people sending these connecting pitches aren’t showing up to connect and build a relationship with you, just like Brynne has built a relationship with this gal for like five years now, and I bet that that started with a real conversation. What they’re doing is showing up to convert you into a sale, very transactional, very icky. So you need to stop the connecting pitch and instead start like I said, before earning your conversations, which, in the long run, will be much more effective than a Connect and pitch plan which. And pardon my French here, but there’s no other way to put it. It just pisses off many, many people, right?

Brynne Tillman  02:54

Brynne, yeah, I would say tick off in business. Okay, yeah, no, it’s totally true. It’s, it is. It’s very, very annoying. It’s very frustrating. And it also is one of the reasons people generally are not loving LinkedIn. You know, so many people, sales people, obviously look at LinkedIn as a lead gen tool, and that’s where they go wrong, right? This is not a list that you buy and burn through hoping and praying someone responds. This is really about building rapport, providing real value, and ultimately creating conversations because you’ve earned the right, as Bob said, and you know, philosophically, when you think about how you like to engage and interact with people, is probably typically when you feel like you matter. 

So, right? And when you get a pitch, it doesn’t feel like you matter. It means the salesperson showed up with the intention to fill their agenda and their pipeline. And so what we’re talking about, and it is really foundational to successful social selling, is to detach from what that prospect is worth to you and attach to what you are worth to the prospect, and the only way we can do that is to show up without our own agenda. So I want to talk for a second about where setting the agenda in sales can really bite you, right? So, you know, I went through my initial sales training was a very traditional sales training where you start with BANT, and it’s all about getting to a fast No, and it’s all about, you know, making sure that you have this upfront conversation immediately saying that I can you. 

Tell you that you’re not a fit. You tell me that I’m not fit, and we’re quits, right? And that just doesn’t work anymore, for many reasons. When we have that conversation, number one, we are assuming they are hot and ready for us, and that’s really broken, because very few are. The other thing is, it’s about what we need. Getting to a fast no is about what we need, you know, and when I hear a fast no is second to a fast Yes, it makes me sad, because once you get to a fast no, it really cuts off all conversation. And our goal is to engage in conversation so that when the time is right, we’re the ones they call. We’re the ones they connect with. I had a wonderful conversation today with a gentleman who will likely be joining our community in the next week or so in our membership. And the conversation came out from I’ve been following you for years. Your content is amazing. I just launched my own business, and I need help. 

If I got to a fast no with him, it would have been such a turn off that this opportunity would never have opened up. So we have to detach from getting a yes or no and be attached to bringing value to every single person we touch in the way that it’s meaningful to them, not in a value centric way that is only meaningful to me. So you know, Bob, I’m sure you’re gonna, you have some of your great one liners that you’ll throw out here. But part of this is about we’ve got to slow down our outreach, to speed up our outcome. When we pitch too soon, we create what we fear the most, which is no conversations, or worse, a bad reputation.

Bob Woods  07:05

Yes, yeah. So, I mean, that’s when, I think that’s when, at just, just at the very start of it, before the actual conversation happens, we really need to think about what we’re doing it as permission based marketing. So, you know, really earning the right to have a conversation by providing value context, which all of that gives you credibility, and of course, that the other person wants to hear. That’s where the permission and permission based marketing comes from. It’s really easy to do, though, with just one core principle. And it’s like, it’s like one of those, you know, just slap you upside the head, obvious types of things, but it’s really true, start the kinds of conversations that people actually want to have. I know, right? Yes, exactly. 

That means any initial outreach you do. It needs to be what is important to them, not what you want to sell. That’s why connect and pitch so badly, because it’s all about you. It’s not about them. So there are four things that you can do. We have all four of these things in an ebook that you can download for free at social sales. Link.com/earn, E, A, R, N, not the earn that has ashes. Let’s just make, you know, be sure that we have that you socialsaleslink.com/earn, so Brynne, let’s get to the first thing, which is, and I’ll have you take this if you take this, if you don’t mind, is leading with Curie cut, leading with curiosity, not a calendar, Calendar link. I was going to say Calendly, because that’s what we use. But they’re all types of things.

Brynne Tillman  08:55

Calendly, it’s like Kleenex.

Bob Woods  08:57

Yeah, exactly. Xerox is stuff

Brynne Tillman  09:00

like that. Everything is a zoom.

Bob Woods  09:01

and everything is zoom anymore, even though there are anyhow, lead with curiosity, not a calendar link.

Brynne Tillman  09:08

Yeah. So this is so important, and I’m actually going to share, kind of our framework around that, right? And it’s our aware framework. The first one is grab their attention and attract right and ultimately, this is about resonating with the right person that the first line, they go, Ooh, this is for me. And sometimes it’s using an industry or a role something that they go, this is me. This is speaking to me. The second the W in aware is wonder, and that is the curiosity piece. If you do not create curiosity, they’re going to keep scrolling. So we need to attract and create curiosity in the first line of anything that we put out there. Really important next is add value or create an aha moment, right where you’ve got them going, Oh, that’s so interesting. I never thought of it like that before. 

The next piece in aware is art, and it’s reframing the way they look at their current situation or solution. So now, not only did you teach them something new, but now they’re thinking about it differently in their environment, and then engage. We’ve got to create engagement. We’ve got to move them from Lurker to engager. If we don’t, we can’t start a conversation with them. So a big piece of this outreach, the message or content, I mean, across the board, is we’ve got to hit those five points. So instead of saying, Hey, we help companies just like you, you know you, you are bringing value so that you’re earning the right that you’ve brought so much value that they want to respond, right? That’s the engagement in that particular case. So if you’re not bringing that kind of value at the top of the conversation, it’s likely that conversation isn’t ever going to really get started.

Bob Woods  11:18

Yep, yep, and, and just with the point that I’m going to take next, it’s really all about adding value before you ask for time, which this is where, you know, again, connect. And pitch really fails, because it’s a pitch. It’s one way you’re not adding value. Part of adding value is, is the conversation going back, back and forth, learning what’s important to them. But overall, this doesn’t mean sending a PDF that or a link, quite frankly, to a PDF that’s gated and they have to submit their email address and, you know, get put in a drip campaign or whatever. What you know is there some value there, yeah, but that’s also very transactional.

I think what it does mean is giving them something, whether, whether it is like a very informational PDF or conversation, or, you know, whatever value you can deliver there, but it has to be relevant, enough relevant to them that it sparks thought on their end, or it starts a deeper conversation. So that could be like a short insight tied to something that they have recently posted on LinkedIn, or, quite possibly somewhere else too, if they’re on other socials, especially like this is where scrambled brain is coming in. 

Brynne, the other one that substack yes every once in a while, I’m still vapor locking on a couple things or a personalized takeaway from an event or trend in their industry, again, their industry, or, you know, some kind of deliverable that especially doesn’t require a click or form to access, because, like I said, that’s that’s a turn off. A turn on is priming conversations. So you’re not providing value to earn the right to sell, because you’re putting the cart before the horse there. You’re providing relevance to earn the right to talk. And that’s what it’s all about. Talk to provide value, to get them interested, to see if they’re interested to see if they’re if this is a good time for them to even be talking about you. It might be six months later. You don’t know that, right?

Brynne Tillman  13:28

Brynne, yeah, and I want to share, you know, there’s another piece in this where sometimes value to them is asking their perspective on something. It doesn’t always have to be our insight. It could be, you know, maybe I’m, you know, I’m writing a blog post, and I’d love a quote from you in that blog post that’s valuable to them. You’re promoting them. You’re getting their name out. Even a one click vote on a poll is asking them for their insights. The other way, and I was working with a client on this, and I absolutely love this approach. 

And LinkedIn allows you to do this if you can identify who their influences are, the people that they’re following or engaging with, and you can go find another piece of content. So this, this is something I just did. There was someone that was engaging in Meredith Elliot Powell’s content. I went out to YouTube, and I found a Thrive video that was awesome, and I watched maybe four or five minutes of a 20 minute, I have a teed up, I’m going to watch the whole thing. And I just reached out and said, I see we’re both big fans of Meredith, Elliot Powell, I just came across this YouTube. Started listening to it. I have it teed up, but, man, I already took away one major thing. 

If you’re interested, let me know. I’ll send you a link that’s a value to them, that has nothing to do with me or us or my insight. Is so when we think about value, it needs to go beyond the insight I can bring, and start thinking about other ways to bring value that start the conversation. And we’ve got a couple of great little things in here. Now, this is my friend Tez in real life, from the West Orange Chamber of Commerce, an amazing realtor out of Livingston. Give her a shout out. The Connect and pitch is such a turn off. I mean, they waste no time well. So here’s the reason this is happening is because they’re looking at LinkedIn like a cold calling tool instead of a relationship building tool. And we have Deborah diamond with sales. People do need to research and understand the organization or company. 

The worst is someone coming forward with no knowledge. Deborah, I can’t agree more. I’m going to say one of the biggest pet peeves of mine is when the first message is, Hey, have you considered doing a podcast? Or I don’t you, the content you share is really great. Have you considered writing a book? Right? We’re like on episode 500 of our podcast, I have two best sell well, three old, one old one, two best selling books currently, one that you can find in airports. 

So if you did your homework, as Deborah mentioned, then you might have a different conversation with me, right? It might be really very different. So when you’ve got an AI is is hurting this where it really should be helping this, because you can download somebody’s LinkedIn profile into a PDF, upload it into Gemini or ChatGPT or notebook, LM, whatever you want to do that and ask it a few questions, and it will tell you everything you need to know before Before that call. So love that we have a team live.

Bob Woods  17:03

Hashtag, Team live. I love that.

Brynne Tillman  17:05

That’s great. I don’t know that one, but I like it. I don’t know

Bob Woods  17:08

It’s the first time I’ve heard of it, but we will definitely be using it from now on. That’s great. Thank you. Marcello, appreciate that a lot.

Brynne Tillman  17:17

Okay, what’s number three? 

Bob Woods  17:18

My friend, numeral trace is so again, this is about everything that we’re talking about doing is about putting, think of it as putting them in the spotlight, and you’re the one holding the spotlight itself that’s projecting the spotlight onto them. This is what all of this is, is kind of about. And then you adding your value to the spotlight. But number three is matching your message to their moment, not your moment. So timing does matter. Context drives timing seems pretty obvious. So you know when it when it comes to timing, look at things like, have they posted recently? 

A big one for a lot of people in a lot of industries is, did they just change jobs? If they change jobs a lot of time, that is a potential opportunity for you to help them out. It’s also a potential opportunity to help out the company that they came from. Know the story entirely, but you have to start thinking of things like that. Are they engaging with content around a topic that you solve that one is is a big one too, the one that a lot of people don’t think of, but we teach a lot here at social sales link, have they viewed your profile? It can be that simple.

If they viewed your profile, that is a great way to find out why they did add value to that, and get that conversation started when you connect these dots. And there were a myriad of dots that I gave you, but when you connect these dots, your outreach becomes personalized without being pushy. So again, connect and pitch if there’s, if there was, when you look up the word pushy in the dictionary, the phrase connect and pitch should be there, because it’s just, it’s pushy and it’s a turn off. It’s as bad as cold calling. In my opinion, don’t really put them into the spotlight by matching your message to their moment.

Brynne Tillman  19:18

Brynne, so I love matching it to their moment. I think that that is so impactful, and finding where they are is easy with AI today. What is their moment? And their moment could be based on the role they play inside of their organization, the size of their organization. Are they hiring people in their organization? Are they putting out top of the funnel content is that? Is that? What’s interesting to them? Are they? You know where they are. You can identify. Now, one of the things I learned from David Newman gazillion years ago was, where do you fall in the journey? And I remember putting a chart together in when I was being coached their journey. 

And you know, our journey is through. In this case, it was through onboarding sales reps. That was the journey. Where do we fall in? And there was this question between, do we fall in before sales training or after sales training? Do we fall in? Is the profile during the first couple of weeks on onboarding? Because that’s what when they announced the new job, is it positioned well? So a lot of it is really identifying where you fall in that journey, and it could be in multiple places. The goal then is to create content based on where they might be. 

So one example is new sales rep in a new role. How do you you know they just announced this, right? So we could send a message that says, Congratulations on your new role. I took a look at your profile. I have some ideas that might be able you know, to help you kind of tell this new message better. If you’re interested, let me know I’m happy to send over the ebook. That’s my insight. I might have other insight, but by if it’s a huge company, I’ll find someone in their company that has a great profile and say congratulations on the new role. I don’t know if you saw Bob Woods profile, who’s in a similar role, but it’s awesome if you’re looking to copy someone, and they laugh right, like because you found someone in their organization. 

So there are so many things that we could do. Last thing on who’s viewed your profile. Great message, Bob, thanks so much for viewing my profile. I had a chance to look at yours, and I’d love to either, if they’re not a connection, introduce myself, or I’d love to learn a little bit more about what you’re doing. PS, may ask how you found me, and that’s how you identify where the way they found you may also let you know where they are today. Yep, absolutely, this was going to be a short one, Bob, and certainly isn’t.

Bob Woods  22:20

You know when? When you said in the pre planning day, oh, this is going to be a short one. We should tell people it’s going to be a short one. I told myself whenever we say that, it is never a short one. So we just shouldn’t say that at all. So anyhow, and it certainly proved itself true again this time. So our last point here is let the conversation build naturally. So, you know, that’s, that’s kind of like doing, connecting and pitching, but at a much softer type of pace, I think. So in other words, you’re going into the conversation thinking, at some point I’m going to try to close this down. 

I’m going to try to close them like a garage door always be closing, you know, like that type of mentality. Well, you need to throw that out as well. Everything needs to build naturally. And, you know, something, it might not even build into a true type of, you know, oh, let me show you a demo, or whatever it is you do to get someone into your funnel, it might be a continued conversation based on what you talked about before, no matter what it and I can’t diagram where things might go, because every conversation is going to be different, but you do need to let them build naturally, because Ultimately it’s all about being human. 

So like, at the very, very beginning, when you’re just like, have when you’re just really, really starting a relationship on LinkedIn, and it’s still on LinkedIn, when someone replies, you know, resist the urge to pivot immediately into the pitch, just like I said, stay in the conversation a little longer. Treat them like a human being, not as a prospect who you’re trying to get to sign on the dotted line. 

Ask questions that are better, ask questions that other people aren’t asking, ask questions that want to bring out insight from them and then share something useful to them and make sure it’s useful to them, not just about your product. And build familiar, build familiarity before asking for additional time. All of this builds trust, and trust, and especially the type of trust where people are seeing you more as an expert than a salesperson. That’s what earns meetings. Brynne, yes

Brynne Tillman  24:39

and familiarity is one of the hardest words to come out of my mouth, yes, and I use it all the time in writing. So when I was doing the audio book for the LinkedIn edge, I had to mispronounce it three times. I just had to. I’m just curious if anyone is listening to the audio book. Let me know. Okay. Okay, so Taz asked the question for the non Premium accounts, there are limits to who can see that I’ve seen our profile. 

So when you have a free account, you can see the last five people that have viewed your profile. If they are anonymous, even if you had a premium, you still would not see their profile. So the level of what you can see is the same. It’s just limits you to the last five any premium level will give you the last 90 days. Actually it’s up to 365 days. Now.

Bob Woods  25:35

Whoa. Search on this for our classes I’m going to present at some point, but one of the things that I discovered, excuse me, is that it’s now up to a full year. Well, golly, right. And so to answer this question, he said he tried navigator and didn’t find it valuable for the price tag. That’s going to happen with some people when it, when

Brynne Tillman  25:59

When it comes. I know Tez, and I want to say how she can use it before you say that she doesn’t go

Bob Woods  26:03

Ahead because, because that’s what I was going to say. So, so, so you go ahead.

Brynne Tillman  26:07

So there’s a few things, and I can read Bob’s mind, and I agree with him that you could have, like a job seeker or another program that would open some of that up. But I actually think Tez, you are the strongest networker I know, hands down. And she’s like, everywhere, an incredible realtor, too. So Keller Williams, go check her out. And if you’re listening, it’s Tez Roro, O, R O, R, o, so check her out. I think Sales Navigator used the right way for you. 

Tez can be a game changer, and a lot of that is finding and engaging with the right referral partners. That you can find all the mortgage brokers and connect with them and then view their connections and then change jobs are huge too. So if you see people getting promoted, that may be the opportunity for you to reach out, and potentially they want to upgrade their home as well. So if you were looking, let’s say, at executives, you don’t even have to be connected to them to get this information on Sales Navigator, right. 

You could look at, let’s say, all of the top C suite within, you know, Livingston, Short Hills, Milburn, West, all the places you serve when there is a promotion or a new job and you have content that you can provide to them, that can open up an enormous amount of doors for both listing and for buying, for selling and for buying, reach out. Let’s chat. Let’s reconnect.

Bob Woods  27:47

There you go. There you go. So, you know, we’ve given you all kinds of things now, it really ultimately comes down to shifting your mindset. I mean, that’s that, that’s what it’s all about. You know, you may think that connect and pitch is that proverbial easy button, instead of what it really can be for a lot of people, which is a damage button. 

So you know, it does take more thought, more patience, more front end effort, but the payoff is real, and you will be able to help more of the right people who know what it is you do rather than getting them turned off by connecting pitch and they never want to speak to you again. So a quick final reminder before we wrap up our ebook at social sales. Link.com/earn, E, A, R, N, it has everything that we talked about in there and more so, and it’s free, so no worries about, you know, having to pay or anything like that. Anything else before we wrap up, Brynne on this short episode,

Brynne Tillman  28:51

Yeah, I think that the goal really is to get into the shoes of your recipient of this content, and think, if I received this, would it feel like a pitch, or would it feel like value? And if it feels like a pitch, then obviously you’ve got to switch it up, but don’t send out anything that you have not vetted as the receiver of that content.

Bob Woods  29:23

That’s a great way to think of it. That’s it. And, you know, test it on other people. You know, whether or not they are in that audience of people you’re trying to sell to, or, heck, you know, maybe a family member or something like that, someone who could look at you and go, Yeah, this feels a lot salesy. You may want to correct this, this and that too. So you know, definitely do all that again, put the spotlight on them, not on you. 

So with that, thanks for joining us here on making sales social live. We are here live every week. So join us next week. We’d love to have you here. If you’re listening to this as a recording on our podcast, go. Ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button to access all of our previous shows and be alerted when new ones drop. Also drop us a like and or a comment. Besides these LinkedIn lives, we also interview leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business and many, many more areas. 

So catch those episodes as well. Those are a lot of fun. If you’d like more information on our podcast. Social sales. Link, dot. Podcasts are where you want to go. Calm, slash, podcast, Flash. Podcast, exactly. Still a little scatterbrained there, so when you are out and about, be sure that you’re making your sales.

Brynne Tillman  30:38

Social.

Bob Woods 30:40

Bye guys, Bye guys,

Outro 30:42

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