Episode 216: 7 Social Selling Activities for Sales Leaders and Their Team

Brynne Tillman  00:00

So, Hello and Welcome to a Special Edition of Making Sales Social Live. I’m Brynne Tillman and I am really excited to be here today to talk about seven activities for sales leaders and their teams.

Intro  00:16

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! This is the recorded version of our weekly Making Sales Social Live Show. 

Brynne Tillman  00:38

This is really about optimizing LinkedIn, for social selling, I’m gonna dive right in. So the first activity that we need to do is embrace social listening. This is about building rapport and social proximity. So one of my little pet peeves is when I get on a call with someone that I’ve connected with on LinkedIn, I’ve had some messages back and forth. And now we’ve set in, “Hi, nice to meet you. Where are you from?” And we go, we’re on LinkedIn together, take three seconds, kind of do a little social listening. 

When I started in sales, and I walked into an appointment, I would look around the office, maybe the walls of the hallway, go down the office and look at the awards they’ve won, pictures of their family. Maybe they have big images of products in the corner of their offices. But I learned so much just making my way into the conference room to have the conversation. Well, we can do that on LinkedIn, we can take a little bit of time prior to every single conversation, and just do a little deep dive into who they are, what content they care about, take a look at their influencers, you can see who they’re following.

Maybe even companies that they’re following, take a look at their recommendations, who’s saying great things about them, and even some of your shared connections. So don’t show up to any meetings we want to keep in mind. We’re embracing social listening. There’s also embracing social proximity, we’ll get deeper into this in another step. But this is about looking at LinkedIn and social selling from a networking slash relationship-building perspective. So who do we know that knows who we want to know, and start to leverage this warm market mentality versus this cold outreach mentality. 

So that’s the first thing, the next thing that we want to do is we want to make sure that all of our sales team, every client-facing person has a profile that’s on brand. If they are in a business development role, we want to make a shift in their profile from resume to resource. You know, lots of these folks are going to have people visiting their profile vetting them before meetings, these are little micro landing pages representing you in the company. So we want to make sure that the voice is right, that the grammar is right, that the logo is right. 

Yeah, even you know, the images and the content that’s being shared. So before we send any sales rep into the field, or on the phones, we want to make sure that their profile is on brand and is actually bringing value to your, to your to the profile visitor, right, the job of our profile, is to help us convert a visitor to a conversation, our content can do that our engagement can do that. But this landing page, if they show up, and this is a boring resume, this is you know, my years of experience, even my personal passion, yeah, they’ll care about you, but not at the top of the funnel. 

They’ll care about you and what you stand for a little bit further down. But when they get here, make sure that we have really great resources in the featured section, that the about section isn’t your mission, your vision, your passion, but it’s about the challenges that your prospects face and some really good insights that get them thinking a little differently about their current situation. And you’ll hear that again when we talk about content. But ultimately saying “Man, if I can learn this much from my profile.”

“Imagine what a conversation with this person will be,” It’s really a big deal. Next, number three, they have the right mindset and approach. If they’re going at LinkedIn, like cold calling, or they even are trying to use automation, please no automation, they’re going to actually do the exact opposite of what they’re looking to achieve. We have all been victims of the Kinect and pitch. So we want to make sure that the sales reps have the right mindset that they’re coming at this from a value-driven perspective, that they are looking at their LinkedIn activity very similarly than as they would if they were in a networking meeting. 

In fact, we often say treat the person on the other side of the message the same way you would on the other side of the table. So if you’re like me, I want to talk with 100 people today. It’s like walking into a networking meeting with a huge pile of business cards walking around saying, “Hi, I’m Brynne, I’ll take your card.” “Hi, I’m Brynne, I’ll take your card right and now I have tons more cards, but no rapport building, no relationship.” No one will even remember me unless it’s a little bit like a laughingstock right. So we want to make sure that we are in this one last mindset that I think is so valuable for people in fact. 

I recommend folks put it on a post-it note and stick it on their monitor, detach from what the prospect is worth to you, and attach to what you are worth to the prospect. So why does that matter? We’re not showing up here thinking I gotta hit my numbers. I gotta get my commission, I gotta make my sales. I gotta fill my pipeline. We’re out on LinkedIn saying “I want to bring value to my network.” And as long as we’re bringing the right value at the right time to the right people, the conversations will happen. Trust-based conversations will happen without being salesy. Number four, that measures and tweaks the right KPIs. 

Sales leaders, we are so stuck in the old-fashioned, like, reverse timeline. Do you know how many calls we have to make to get conversations and we get stuck in that kind of that cold calling KPI mentality, we lose all the rapport and relationship-building benefits here. So the KPIs that we should be looking at the success of social selling is how many new conversations are we having with the right people around the right topic. That is the result, KPI that we want to look at. And then we really need to back in what activities are going to get us there. 

And the activities that get us there are not going to be masked, or mass messaging, we need to earn the right to get those conversations. So it has to be insights, value, conversation starters, not, “Hey, we help companies just like you or, you know, are you open to getting new clients or right like that?” We are so over that as consumers. And you know, every time I get a new client, I just want to know, I don’t want any new clients ever again. I mean, it’s such a silly question, everyone, almost everyone is taking on new clients. But it’s manipulative. And we don’t want that that’s not how we build relationships, or we get conversations. 

So really important. Number five, access to social selling content. While you may not want your sales reps creating content, they need content that helps them to convert their connections to conversations. And social selling content really is going to fall under. Let me just say there’s five points I kind of touched on in the profile we’re going to touch on and again, five points that content needs to have in order to be social selling content. caveat, not all content is social selling content. This is not the formula for all content. 

This is the formula for the content, preferably evergreen content that your reps can use over and over again, for each persona that they’re reaching out to or each industry That hits five points. Number one, it resonates with the buyer immediately. So for example, this particular live is, or podcast this, this episode is seven social selling activities for sales leaders in their team. Now we’ve got lots of people that are listening live, and we’re gonna have lots of people that are watching and listening to this in replay. But the goal here was to track sales leaders. Now, if other people come, that’s great, I hope you’re having fun. 

But if you’re a sales leader, you probably said, “Yeah, I’m going to listen to this or show up and watch this live, because it resonates with me.” Number one, number two, creates curiosity. Hopefully, seven social, social selling activities was enough to say, “I’m curious, what are those activities that will get my team successful?” Then when you get in, I have to teach you content insights that you didn’t think about before, they have to be new and innovative, because if I sound like everyone else, you’re gonna leave early, my numbers will go down quickly, you know, or you’ll stick around and go, Well, that was a good idea. I’m ready for the next one. 

You also have a good idea that there’s seven, I’m on five right now, you know, there’s only two more it’s worth hanging out for. Right. But I have to earn that right? By providing value and insights in ways that you didn’t think about before. The next one is I have to get you thinking differently about the way you’re running your business today. So you have to get social selling content. When you offer insights. The key is that you are shifting the mindset of your buyer that they’re going. I never looked at it this way before. And boy, that would be really helpful if we didn’t think that way. 

And if you can do that, then we create number five, which is a compelling moment, like a comment, a connection, request, and acceptance of a connection request. Ideally, when we move them from Lurker to engager. When they make a move, we now know who they are. And we can start a conversation with them. If they don’t respond, if they don’t engage with the content. Or if they don’t, you know, we will never know if they don’t even respond to us sharing it by asking if they’d be interested in it. Because our topic doesn’t resonate or create curiosity. We’re working for, you know, kind of spinning our wheels. 

So it’s really important that we’ve got the right content that creates the right action. So if we are looking for engagement, we need to have social selling content. And as sales leaders, we have to make sure that we’re working with our marketing group marketing team to make sure that we have that available for all the personas and all the industries. Number eight connecting with clients and prospects. I am blown away by how many conversations one of my new prospects one of my new clients has, that I’m talking I’m like, are you connecting with the people you’re talking to every day? 

He said, “No.” I said, “Well, how many people are you talking to every day, he’s like three to five, connect with them all.” There’s nurturing opportunities, there’s warm market opportunities, there’s networking opportunities, there’s going to change jobs someday. You want to connect with everyone, you’re having a conversation with all those right people. Absolutely essential to success here. So make sure you’re connecting, go through your CRM, look at all of your business cards, you know, pull out the business cards with the rubber bands in the corner of your desk and start looking through them and see who here should I be connecting with? It’s really important. And number seven, mind your connection. 

So this is to identify your first-degree connections, Right? Take inventory, and then find out who some of them know. So take inventory, you can export your connections, or you can search your first-degree connections by industry by title by geographic location. Yes, we can do that. And we can build a list of all of the first degree connections that are past clients, current clients prospects, referral partners. Centers of Influence people that we want to start conversations with people that we have been ignoring. Right? 

And then we’re going to decide how we are going to engage? Are we going to send them content? Are we going to ask them to vote on a poll, we’re going to ask them for a quote in an ebook that we’re writing. There’s so many ways to engage these folks, and start trust-based conversations without being salesy. But the next thing we want to do, especially with our centers of influence and our clients, is we want to mind their connections, take a look at who they know that we want to meet. And we reach out and say it “Ms. Client, I’ve so enjoyed working with you, I’m glad we’ve been able to help you do X, Y, and Z.” 

You know, such an absolute pleasure. I’m not sure if you know, but the way I’ve typically grow my business has been from introductions and referrals from my happy clients, I happen to notice that you’re connected to quite a few folks on LinkedIn that I’d love to get in front of, would you mind if I ran these names by you notice, I’m not asking them for introductions. I’m just saying, Can I run these names by you? Now, maybe there’s 2025 names. And it’s whittled down to four or five, we’ve got four or five names that they go, these would be great for you. Like, thanks so much. 

If these names are there, anyone on here, you’d feel comfortable introducing me to these two, thank you so much. When I reached out to the other three, was it okay that I mentioned your happy client, and that you thought it made sense for me to connect? Great. Now I have five new opportunities in the pipe. And I’m coming in at a very high level of credibility. So those are the seven social selling activities, sales leaders really need to embrace and start to just, you know, blend, so it into the fabric of your sales process. We’re not taking over the sales process. We’re not saying stop everything. But make sure that you are leveraging your social proximity, your relationships to start more trust-based conversations without being salesy. 

I’m gonna hop into the questions in the q&a. And our first one is from Stan Edwards, Bynne. This is good stuff. Thanks, Stan. I appreciate it so much. Put in chat what you think your favorite takeaway from this was? And Kevin says, “Great point.” And we have an anonymous LinkedIn user. Oh, when I look at my other device, I see. It’s Michael, Michael, you had to change your settings. So I could see you. But that’s all good. Trust-based conversations. Yes. So important. So if you guys have any questions, or you want to talk about any of your takeaways, you know, and just kind of want to round this out, by saying social, we should not be engaging in random acts of social selling, we really need to be conscious about the activities that we’re doing. 

And then it’s driving the right Act, the right results, the right engagement, that we’re not just out there, doing it for the sake of doing it right that we’re out there with purpose. Oh, hello, my friend, Don Chester. “It says Brynne has always great info and also a great example of how to put together content and put it out to prospects to get them engaged.” Content. Yes, Fabulous. And I think we have another LinkedIn user to look down to see who this might be. It could be Dave mentale. I’m impressed with your efficiency. I had the entire hour set aside. Thank you. Yep. No, I love to do them in 20 minutes. And now we’re in Q&A.

You know, we don’t have the time to get to it. Absolutely. So that’s awesome. I’m so glad that you found that helpful. Hello, and now we have Jay Fernando, thank you for always learning something new from your talks. I’m glad. Hopefully, it’s something new that gets you thinking differently about your current situation. And I created a compelling moment by having you comment. I love it. Awesome. Johnson, “What about helping people in your network because it’s the right thing to do?” Hopefully, at some point, they’ll reciprocate. So yeah, that’s fine as long as the right people are in the right circles, and that what you’re providing for them is really valuable in their eyes. 

I don’t want you to spin your wheels just being a really nice guy. Keep that for Facebook. Here. We want to be a really nice guy in the right space. Now. Someone else randomly reaches out for help. I love to do that. But I would not go out seeking to help people simply to help them. It’s really important there. We have, Don says “Dave, exactly this is, this is how to put a presentation together. Thank you.” Samuel says thank you very much, Brynne. After this, I’m going to offer the best value and ensure that my prospects are built in the right way. Love it. Tony says “Brynne Can you collaborate?” 

Sorry, it’s really tiny on my screen on what is a good social selling content, social selling content, does these five things resonate with your buyer, creates curiosity, teaches them something new, that gets them thinking differently about their current situation, and creates a compelling moment. So we’re moving them from worker to engagement. So we can start that conversation on a LinkedIn user, this might be David. Again, I think we could all think more about what we are worth to our clients, and how to articulate that. For most of us, the value really is very high. I am sure, I am sure it’s very high. But you know, when we tell them, it’s very high, they don’t believe us. But when I experience it, we earn the right to get the sales call. 

Guys, I’ve had so much fun, I hope you have to make sure you visit socialsaleslink.com/podcast to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts, and then go to social sales link.com/library where you can get all of our everything ebooks, webinars, lots and lots and lots of content. And then wait, I have one more. We’ll do one more. “Can you please let’s see. Can you please send out those five progressive points” Kevin, drop me a message on LinkedIn and I will get them to you. And I may actually create an eBook out of it now. So guys, thanks so much. If you’re watching live Have a wonderful weekend. If you are listening in replay, have a wonderful day whatever day it is, and we really appreciate you.

Outro  22:30

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