Episode 148: The Power in Social Proximity

Bob Woods  00:00

Welcome, everyone, to Making Sales Social Live! Brought to you by Social Sales Link. I’m Bob Woods, and I’m joined by co-host and fellow LinkedIn and social selling professional Brynne Tillman, what’s up, Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  00:13

Hello, my friend Bob, I’m happy to be here with you today.

Bob Woods  00:17

Always happy to be here with you and to send out some knowledge about what it is we do every day because we know it can help a lot of other people. 

Intro 000:27

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live! As we share LinkedIn and social selling training strategies and tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman and me, Bob Woods, every week, Making Sales Social Live!

Bob Woods  00:43

So if you’re a bit older than had to be like that much older, certainly not my age or whatever, you might remember the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” where players choose an actor and then connect them to either another actor by using Kevin Bacon as one of the degrees or connect directly to Kevin Bacon, via film that both actors have appeared in together. The person who wins is the one who finds the shortest path. Now, by the way, I’m only two degrees away from Kevin Bacon, which is a long, complicated story.

Brynne Tillman  01:20

I heard you say long, but shorten it up and tell me how are you two degrees from Kevin Bacon?

Bob Woods  01:26

Really long story short, I sold him a printer when he was making a movie when I worked in computer retail in Chicago, and he came into our store in the loop. (Brynne: Did you meet him?)  I worked with him. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman  01:43

Well, then, you’re one degree. You’re it.

Bob Woods  01:46

No, no, no, no, that’s Oh, I’m sorry. I should have mentioned the actor John Larroquette is the person who I’m connected to, Kevin Bacon through.

Brynne Tillman  01:54

Oh, John Larroquette was one of my favorites. He was on Nike Court.

Bob Woods  01:58

Yeah, yes. Great actor really nice guy in person.

Brynne Tillman  02:03

Okay, so now I get it. Okay. So Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. You are one person away. So keep going.

Bob Woods  02:12

Right! Yes. So, in other words, if this were LinkedIn, John Larroquette. I’m sorry, Kevin Bacon, too many actors. Kevin Bacon would be a 2nd-degree connection of mine. So this works on LinkedIn too. And actually, Brynne, I know you have a story that you’ve told before, but I think it’s so effective, and it also shows the power of social proximity.

Brynne Tillman  02:37

Yeah. So you know, social proximity is interesting. When we think of our proximity to someone. Typically, we would think of it in a physical way. You know, my proximity is, I’m two miles from the mall, right? Like you think of that. Social proximity is what is our pathway to get to our targeted buyers, prospects, referral partners? What is our social map, right? That journey? So, and we want to plot it. Let’s start with first and then I’ll get to my story, your best ultimate social proximity is 1st-degree to a decision maker.

Bob Woods  03:18

Right. Right. So in my example, that would be directly to Kevin Bacon.

Brynne Tillman  03:24

Right, If Kevin Bacon had walked in, and you worked with him, that’s your best connection. The second one and I’m not gonna say that they’re definitely in this order because it really depends on how deep your relationship is. But the second one is a client or prospect or someone that you know well, or knows you well, knows that person. 

So let’s say you and John Larroquette went out to coffee, you built a little bit of a rapport, and now, you know, after a little while, you’re like, “Hey, you know, I noticed you’re connected to Kevin Bacon on LinkedIn, and it’s someone I’d love to get in front of, can I ask you how well do you know him?”  “Oh, we’re doing a movie together. I see him every day on the set. “ And you’re like, “Oh, would you be open to making an introduction, or at least allowing me to reach out to him to let him know that we talked and you thought it made sense.” 

So that’s the concept, right? So we are connected. We are one degree connected. Now there are lots of other scenarios, right? So there could be I’m connected to someone in the company at a lower level that might be able to get me in, but the goal ultimately is to leverage our social proximity to enter the ecosphere of our buyer or decision maker or targeted audience at a high level of credibility because it came through a shared connection. 

So why we are here today is when I started in sales, and It’s a long story. So I’m not going through the whole story. But in the 90s, I recognized how much I loved sales and people and solving problems. What I hated was cold calling, just it was, it felt like such a waste of time. What I loved was client referrals. And I knew how to ask for them, and I often got them, and that’s how I grew my business. 

Now, I recall sitting across from one of these clients, I think in 1992, staring at his overflowing Rolodex. So you’ve talked about age and Kevin Bacon, I’m gonna bring it into the conversation. I’d love to know for you guys that are listening. If you still have a Rolodex put “R” in chat out of curiosity in the comments. If you don’t know what a Rolodex is,  put a question mark. Just curious, he’s out there. 

Okay. So staring at his overflowing Rolodex, thinking if I could get my hands on this for 15 minutes, I could identify who he knew that I wanted to meet, ask for introductions, and we wouldn’t have to cold call anymore.  You know, when I realized it was these client introductions that were so meaningful, all of a sudden, it became essential to me to move in that direction. 

So I went a couple of decades, and then I found LinkedIn, and I recognized we have the opportunity to search and filter our connection’s connection. So we can look at John Larroquette’s connections and see he’s connected to Kevin Bacon. So even if you didn’t know it, you could find it. That is the magic. Hands down why LinkedIn, I believe, is the most powerful sales tool that we have today. The social proximity that we have to our ultimate decision makers and buyers and influencers. And guys, now, the number one question we’ll get right now, we’ll be well, can we do this in the free LinkedIn? Or do we have to pay? Bob, what’s the answer to that?

Bob Woods  07:13

You can do it in free. You can absolutely do this in free. And LinkedIn makes it pretty easy to, and there are several, there are a couple of different ways to do it, but you know, essentially, you go in to search, and I’m just gonna do it on my walk in here. Yeah, so it’s really easy to step through it really quick. Just put your cursor in the search box, just enter at that point, you can click on people, and then you’ll see a bunch of filters at the top. And the very first one says connections and you can search by first, you can search by second, you can search by third plus, but that’s really cold in our opinion. So but especially with what we’re talking about today, you definitely want to click into that second, and then you click Show Results, just and that just gives you a general idea of how many 2nd-degrees you have. So in that Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon type of thing, we’re talking about just 2nd-degrees without any other filters, and filters is where the magic lives. By the way, 2nd-Degree alone, I, I have 2.3 2 million people on LinkedIn alone, that I am the second-degree of

Brynne Tillman  08:27

That’s crazy. That means that your business card, your one business card away from that many people but here’s the beautiful thing. LinkedIn has lots more filters, by industry, by location, right, all those kinds of fun things. So maybe we bring it down to a couple of 1000 but here’s where the real magic comes in. So let’s say Bob, you say you know what, I have this great relationship with John Larroquette right now. And I could ask him for an introduction to Kevin Bacon, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to know more people than Kevin that I might want to meet. 

So in that filter, we can type in John’s name and if you’re already a 1st-degree connection of him on LinkedIn, you will get a list and you could put an actor in title or whatever it is that you need, bring that list down and now we have the 19 people John Larroquette knows that Bob wants to meet. One of them is Kevin Bacon. So now when you have a conversation, the conversation can be something around, you know,

“Hey, John, I noticed you’re connected to quite a few people that I’m looking to get in front of over the next few weeks. I’m wondering if you’ve got five minutes where I can just run these things by you. tell you why I’m reaching out and maybe you can help me determine if it makes sense or not.”

 We get on a zoom. 

“Hey, John, great to see you. Obviously, top of the list is Kevin Bacon.” 

He’s like, “Yeah, he’s a great guy. He’d be great for you.” 

Go through the whole list. Maybe you have six now, six people from the list of 19 that John says, “Yeah, that’s perfect.” 

Now, based on your relationship with John and how busy he is, and I’m sure he’s really busy, you could ask for introductions, but we love permission to name-drop. This is a big one.  So, “John, thank you for your time when I reached out to these folks. Can I tell them you said, Hello, can I let them know that we had this conversation? And you thought it made sense for me to reach out?” Right? So “Kevin, John Larroquette and I were chatting the other day, your name came up in our conversation. He says, Hello, right. After talking to him a little bit about X, Y, and Z, he thought it made sense for me to reach out and introduce myself. So if you’re open, let’s connect and I’ll loop you in, in our conversation.” That’s it, now he connects and we assume.

Bob Woods  10:49

It’s simple to do. And also it gives us control over the process because sometimes someone might say, oh, yeah, I’ll even introduce you or, you know, you might think, well, you know, maybe this person should do the initial introductions. That’s great. And it’s great when they volunteer. The thing is, that 1st-degree connection, in this case, John Larroquette might get busy. You know, he might not do it for a wide variety of reasons, none of which have to do with you personally, but yet, it does affect your control of the situation. So that’s why that’s, that’s one of the reasons why we prefer name dropping because it does give us control into when we reach out and more of the process.

Brynne Tillman  11:36

We actually found it in testing. I mean, this is going back years now. But we tested it, and it was all almost the same response. Really close, but we control the sales process. And we can also ask for way more, right, like, you can ask John Larroquette to introduce you to six people. That’s a lot of work, right? (Bob: Yeah. Yeah, that would be) and you know, so thanks, John, wherever you are.

Bob Woods  12:04

Great story that I’m using. Let’s see, I  think we met in like 95 or 96. So that’s like an almost, what, three-year-old story? Oh, my God. I’m getting old.

Brynne Tillman  12:16

It’s okay, I use one of my favorites. I really love him. So I think it’s funny that that came up.

Bob Woods 12:22

Yeah. So.

Brynne Tillman  12:24

And I would want to meet John over Kevin, by the way. So now I am a 2nd-degree.

Bob Woods  12:32

Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Exactly. No, you’re actually, yeah, you’re a second, right. Yeah. Because you’re now a 2nd-degree to John Larroquette and 3rd to Kevin Bacon. That is the magic of social proximity, everyone. So that is how it works. And so I think with that unless there’s something else, I can’t really think of anything. Let’s go ahead and wrap things up. 

So thanks again for joining us live on Making Sales Social Live! If you’re with us right now, live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter. We do this every week. So keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you are listening to us on our podcast, and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button and whatever platform you’re in to access all of our previous shows, which we’ve had some fantastic shows, and we’re recording new ones all the time to that as I think the quality of people that we’re getting in and the topics that we’re talking about, really speaks to subscribing or following us. 

So hit that button for when new ones drop. If you’d like more info on the podcast, it’s socialsalelink.com/podcast Again, that’s socialsalelink.com/podcast We do two shows weekly, we do this one and are Making Sales Social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business, and many more areas. And I’ve done several in the past couple of weeks, and they’ve all been terrific. So subscribe, follow all that kind of good stuff. So when you’re out and about, be sure to make your sales

Brynne Tillman  14:19

social. Bye, guys. Thanks, everybody bye-bye.

Bob Woods  14:23

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