Episode 238: Chet Lovegren – The Future of B2B Sales: Embracing Content Creation and Media Focus

Chet Lovegren  00:00

The sales tool side of things is not as powerful as the relationship side, and more and more companies need to start getting into content creation. So I see a huge shift from “We’re making a lot of sales because we have great sellers,” to “We’re making a lot of sales because we have educating and entertaining content that we’re releasing online.” 

Intro  00:25

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 are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show!

Bob Woods  00:49

The Sales Doctor, Chet Lovegren, is joining us today in the Social Sales Link virtual studios for this episode of Making Sales Social. Chet helps companies develop their sales talent from SDRS to AES and even to frontline managers. He created The Sales Doctor Program as a way to help provide education and insight to individuals and their companies looking for a remedy to their revenue problems. 

Chet is a certified keynote speaker and sales trainer. He also hosts the Sales RX podcast, which you can stream from the usual suspects in podcasting platforms. In fact, wherever you’re listening to this podcast, you’ll probably find his podcast as well. So, let’s get to the prescription for messaging consistency and sales from Chet Lovegren. Welcome to Making Sales Social, Chet.

Chet Lovegren  01:40

Yeah, Bob, thanks! Excited to be here. Happy to have a good chat and interested in some of the questions that we’re going to walk through today. 

Bob Woods  01:48

Sounds good. Sounds good. So let’s get so let’s get rolling like a barrel downhill right into those questions. With the first one being – and this is a traditional one that we asked for everyone. So, [it’s] kind of a hot seat, but probably not – what does making sales social mean to you?

Chet Lovegren  02:06

Yeah, it’s one that I love. I think when people say social selling, they’re like, “Oh, go post on LinkedIn.” And it’s just random, and there’s no intention behind it. “Let’s start a B2B podcast,” like there’s just no intention behind it. And I think people need to understand that, first and foremost, a lot of trains of thought on this one about, you know, people do business with people, they know people do business with people they love better, like all that kind of stuff. And some people say that’s not true. 

Some people say it is true. It doesn’t really matter. And it doesn’t really matter. Because you just want to draw connections. Whether you believe that, it’s because people end up liking you. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. People watch my content, [and] sometimes they say I’m a little aggressive or I’m thinking a little too old school. I like to think I’m old school, new school like we should still hustle. But we should also be empaths. Right? That doesn’t resonate with everyone. I’m kind of middle of the road. I don’t go full like New Age Gen Z.

Everybody deserves a participation trophy. I’m not like old school toxic, make a million dials a day, hit your number, I get fired. I kind of have a healthy middle ground. You know, I expect respect. All except No, but I need you to justify why I have some of those old school concepts with the new school approach as well. So, I know that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, but when I get on a call with a VP of sales who’s in their 50s and says, “I saw that video you did about setting expectations for future communication with your prospects and in the discovery call for follow up, and that was so cool.”  

How did I go? TikTok is not just a dancing app for teenagers. You know what I’m saying? When I get up, [I’m a] door-to-door B2B Solar salesperson. Who wants to join one of my entry-level seller boot camps or programs that we offer from the consumer sales side? Right? Not a VP of sales looking to train their people, just an individual looking to get better because they saw something I posted on YouTube shorts, and they drew that connection. And that resonated with a struggle that they were having. That’s what making sales social is about to me and the benefit of it. 

It’s not posting a picture of your dog, talking about your day, posting your Happy Anniversary thing to your wife, who might also be on LinkedIn, and tagging them as well. That’s cool, like letting people get to know you. But I think about catching people where they’re already trying to entertain themselves and having that content pop up because people do search for tips and educational things on TikTok and YouTube, specifically outside of just LinkedIn, [which] allows you the opportunity to get eyeballs on what it is you’re doing, what you’re talking about.

And the problem you solve – great example is the plumber that I use in my house who has videos on Tiktok about how to do simple things that normal plumbers would charge you a $99 house call for because he knows I don’t want your $99 house call business. I want your $500 plumbing emergency on a Saturday night, which I’ve had to use him for a while. A month ago when something happened in our dishwasher, and all of a sudden my wife’s like,screaming while I’m in the other room doing something and there’s just flooding going on in our kitchen. I’m like “What do I do? It’s Saturday.”, “Oh, I’m gonna call this guy.” 

So I think the same way we talked about product-led growth, what about social-led growth, I’ll give you the little tip that’s gonna help you increase your ARR by 3%, this quarter, because I want you to be successful and then go, we need to increase our ARR by 10%. And then our chat. So that’s to me, that to me is the beauty of social media and how we can make selling social is by not just creating a connection personally to people, but creating connection to the actual things that they’re selfish about. They want to get better at their job, they want to advance in their career, all those fun things, and social media allows us the platform to do that.

Bob Woods  05:35

Yeah, it’s definitely about creating, creating value and delivering that information in a way that promotes and I putting promotes in air quotes, but I mean, you know, people need to feel like that you’re the expert in your field. How do you do that? You provide value. And if you’re providing value on the little stuff, they should be able to feel like what you just said, “This person can really help me when I’m in a bind,” because they’ve already proven that they are the expert in their field to me.

Chet Lovegren  06:08

Yeah, I totally agree. Absolutely.

Bob Woods  06:11

So um, I mentioned that you help companies develop talent from SDRS, to AES, and frontline managers, and you’ve kind of touched on this a little bit already. But can you go a little further into the challenges B2B salespeople face at different stages of their careers and how you address them. And you’ve already talked a little bit about that beginning person who’s going from door to door and, you know, doing the literal cold calling, if you could kind of segment that out a little bit more.

Chet Lovegren  06:43

Yeah. So I think my offering is kind of twofold. There’s what I would call a consumer side to it, where individuals want to join a certain program that fits with where they’re at in their career, or they want one-on-one coaching. You know, we all know that you make more money in B2B. So obviously, my B2B offerings for companies and sales teams try to teach CSMs how to upsell better and have sales conversations. That’s more fruitful, but I still like doing the individual side of things as well. 

We have some group coaching stuff, we have some I have some personal one on one coaching if people want to come out of the pocket for it that charges strictly because of my time, but let’s say let’s let’s break it down for tech sales specifically, say you’re an SDR and you want to get to eat. How do you get there? It’s not just about hitting your quota. I know a lot of SDR who have gotten promoted 132 that have run through my program, for example, who have been promoted in less than 12 months, and maybe only 20 of them actually hit 100% of quota month over month over month over month. 

Because most smart sales leaders know that the SDR job is virtually impossible with the quotas that or set it is most SDR teams don’t hit quota. It’s not because of the economy. It’s because the quotas are pretty unrealistic. And the dollars needed to actually make sense or why we create those quotas. But most people don’t hit them. They just don’t. It’s why when I see somebody on LinkedIn, who’s broken into the SDR world, they’re like, “I’m hitting 182% of quota.” I’m like, “What are you doing unethically?” Because that’s, that’s just I’ve done this long enough to know, unfortunately. 

So it’s tough to bring receipts and I get that, but there are a lot of things you can do outside of just hitting quota that make you a viable candidate for moving into the AE role. So as a sales leader, not only do you wanna see someone who’s at least competent at the job that they’re in, but there’s the optics side of it, the game playing side of it, of how do you be the person that when somebody says we’re thinking of promoting, Chet to AE everybody goes no brainer, even if he’s only hitting 85% of his annual quota. That’s the person that should take this junior AE job that we have. But also, how do you get some practice on the AE stuff that you’re gonna have to do? What is the difference between a qualification call and discovery call? And how can we at least get you thinking in that mindset and actually get you some opportunity to try that out? What is the difference between a, Bob. 

Essentially pipeline management from targeting accounts to working with current opportunities? How does that differ? So when they walk into the program, they’re certified through the sales Dr. SDR to AE program to actually go, I have like baseline that kind of like the tech sales boot camps that get them into SDR because they’ve gone through those, I have baseline understanding of what I’m going to need to do some practice some training. So you’re getting somebody that’s 30 to 40% accelerated, than if you just promoted an SDR who didn’t have that stuff. 

So it’s a threefold one, how do we get you better being an SDR? Two? How do we get you to understand how to manage your promotion, optically play the game, all those fun things? Then three, how do we get you some tactical practice at being an AE and some understanding and foundational knowledge of that, then they become an AE. Next step is an acceleration. And then we have personal growth and professional growth habit training programs that we have as well. So that’s all on the individual side. The company side, it’s typically twofold. 

Their short term engagements, which is like, “Hey, I have a great strategy in place, but my SDR and AES and frontline managers aren’t hitting on it.” Great. Here we come. We can do skill bootcamp work with you. Maybe it’s a one day workshop, maybe it’s an ESCO in person event type thing. Then there’s longer term engagements. where companies typically go, “Hey, we need that. But also, I don’t think my strategy and my ex might be correct.” And that’s more like what you think of traditional consulting fractional leadership, possibly type stuff. I always say at parties I say, “Consulting is a broad term.”

But essentially, in my experience, companies that have a sales team are good at hiring people, they’re not typically good at making those people get great at the job, either because of a skill gap, or because of a strategy gap that’s hindering the execution. And that’s what we essentially want to solve and try to develop that talent because it’s much cheaper to promote someone to AE or promoted as a first time manager that is to go pay fair market value from someone outside the company who doesn’t know your people, your product, your process, the problem we solve all those things.

 Bob Woods  10:43

Yeah, and I think that that process that you discussed is important because I mean, we know this being being in the business but I think a lot of people don’t realize that an STR is actually somewhat of a different scale skill set as an AE and especially as a manager because SDR you qualify quad quad Ay ay ay is really about building the relationships and then obviously managers management. 

Chet Lovegren  11:08

Yeah, totally different skill sets. I always say though, I’d like to see a frontline Manager Go try to sell like an AE. And I’d like to see an ego try to set appointments like an SDR because it’s funny because you kind of graduate into those newer roles. But the farther back you go down, the harder stuff is. I love management because I love leading teams, I love building culture, I love all the fun stuff that comes with management. But being an AE was a lot easier than being a frontline manager and then being a department head. 

Being an SDR was a lot harder than being an AE. But you get the job, you know what I mean? So it’s weird how those sounds coincide. It’s actually like I don’t want to say lower on the totem pole. Because I don’t want to be like, say somebody’s job is not worthwhile. But if it wasn’t, then everybody would love just being an SDR forever, and they don’t. So we can hypothetically say in that scenario, like, the more responsibility or the more clout or the more benefit we get as we advance their career. To some extent, the easier it is to do the job and the harder it is for those people to go back and do that previous job. You know what I’m saying? 

Bob Woods  12:07

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So let’s start getting into a little bit of branding and brand messaging and things like that. So with the emphasis on building lasting relationships, and especially something that we talk about a lot here at Social Sales Link, in this podcast, the importance of making human connections in sales. How do you think sales reps can maintain their personal brands message consistency, while at the same time adapting to their prospects preferences? And how does this consistency resonate with potential clients?

Chet Lovegren 12:45

So 75 plus companies I’ve worked with in three years, and I’ve never met one where sales and marketing weren’t doing this. And for those that may be just listening, I’m smacking my two. Yes, fully together. It’s what we do when we want a social sell. we say we reps go social sell, go make LinkedIn posts about us. It’s not reposting marketing’s content on LinkedIn. It’s not posting canned messages about your CEO releasing their book and now it’s on Amazon. Here’s my canned message we’ve been told to deliver. 

When we want to enable people to talk about our brand, through their own personal brand on LinkedIn. marketing needs to do a better job of creating that message consistency, because what happens marketing creates a lot of great messaging, value propositions, brand guidelines, all this stuff. Then sales goes, Yeah, nobody’s gonna read that. Let’s make it actionable. And then sales enablement is in the middle of going, playing mom and dad trying to pick up the pieces between the two well, marketing saying this is within brand and their guidelines, sales are saying nobody’s gonna read that freaky nine paragraph email. 

What do we do? Well, now we have to train people on how to do the sales job. So by creating more aligned metrics is the first one by also putting guardrails in place and a process. And specifically, there are tools out there now that exist, like market made AI that allow people the ability to collaborate in real time to create consistent messaging to create consistent guidelines and put those guardrails in place. So you don’t have reps going check CBT write me a LinkedIn blog post about blah blah, then they get something that doesn’t fit your brand doesn’t fit what marketing created. 

So there’s right you know, Chris’ boss says “There’s no such thing as compromise” because that’s a husband who wants to wear brown shoes, wife wants him to wear blue shoes, and he walks out of the house with a brown and blue shoe and that never happens. What does he do? He typically walks out with whatever his wife wants him to have. So I think if you know compromises an interesting one when we evaluate well, how does marketing let go of their love of their massive copy that they’ve created? That’s super on brand, very lengthy and content and then sales going. 

But let’s pick it apart but also delivering something that’s subpar that doesn’t connect with our buyer cuz that’s where outbound sales sucks right now, because sales is being told the right 50 Word or less emails because that’s what a software company says increases engagement when I know companies that are sending 200 word emails that are converting at a very high rate lip, because those companies are using a very, very tight knit, aligned version of their email copy that was worked on with the CMO, the Head of Product Marketing, the sales enablement manager, and the director of sales development, because the director of sales development wasn’t given all the marketing material and then made it actionable. 

And then sales enablement, how to actually put it in practice. They all three work together using collaborative methods to be able to go we’re okay with this. “Hey, this has the right marketing jargon, it has the right value prop that we want to send to this buyer persona.” Sales feedback was appreciated and implemented in regards to “Hey, let’s not make it 500 words, Let’s make it 200 words, Let’s not add an interest, Let’s not add a time based CTA asking for time, Let’s add an interest based CTA because interest is infinite time is limited.” People are always interested, have interest in curiosity. 

And then there’s that push and take right sales knows how to get people to pull the trigger of marketing knows how to get people interested. And there needs to be that understanding. I don’t pull triggers from any marketing emails, maybe it’s because I’m a sales guy. I don’t know if a lot of people will pull triggers from marketing generated stuff. But people will pull triggers on buyer persona specific content that’s generated from marketing that is put in a way that sales makes it digestible and actionable. But there’s no alignment there. They just do what we want to do or do what we want to do. 

And there needs to be a more holistic approach where it’s like, “Hey, here’s the market research that’s done at scale.” We know what our buyer persona is, we know what the value prop is. Now, let’s add the sales psychology side of it. And then let’s validate that with sales enablement as well to make sure we’re training people in that way. Now, you’ve got reps that are making clear and concise posts on LinkedIn. They’re creating content on tick tock and YouTube shorts showing exactly how this affects this buyer persona and why it’s relevant for them to look at it. Instead of them just using canned messaging and having little to no results in it’s just spammy. And everybody now scrolls past anything they say. 

Bob Woods  16:57

Yeah, Exactly. And I think that you brought up just such a huge point as something that actually we as social sales, like I think, have been, had been pretty lucky with whenever we get brought into corporations to train their people is obviously we get marketing involved very, very early. In fact, a lot of times we’re actually brought in by marketing and not by sales, which I think is interesting in and of itself, because it shows me that those companies get it or that marketing, those marketing people get it. 

So I think that if if marketing, and I think you can say this with most any B2B driven company, if if they get the social component, and they understand that you need to give like actionable guidelines that salespeople can use, and yet be able to put it into their own voice yet have those guidelines for what it is they need to say that there’s so much more not only is there so much more success, but there’s so much more buy in from the salespeople in doing it in the first place. Would you agree with that? 

Chet Lovegren  18:07

Yeah, sales work should be providing the framework, marketing should be plugging the copy. And then it should get refined by sales. Right? “Hey, here’s the current state of this buyer persona.” “Here’s the future state of this buyer persona.” “What does that look like?” “How is marketing through all their research?” And all the time that they’ve spent thinking about this? We’re going to mark it with a new feature for CISOs. Okay, how does this feature value prop and what the company does at a larger scale integrate as a reason for them to pull the trigger based on current state of CISOs and future status CISOs.

And the buyer persona research you’ve done? And then we plug that in, and then we go, okay, well, unfortunately, we can’t ever future, our current state framework line is four sentences long, how do we condense that down to a sentence or two, right? And ultimately it’s just ego to, like, marketing doesn’t like people picking apart their copy. Sales doesn’t like being told what to do. But you gotta put that aside, because we’re living in a world where, like, economy aside, I hate blaming the economy for stuff personally, because I mean, I went out on my own full time, at the peak of this awful economy, the end of last year, I’m not seeing the results personally, and I have a premium service, Right? 

So for me, it’s that we’ve aligned that stuff correctly. And I think this is why we’re getting this awful outreach that we’re getting. I have eight LinkedIn DMS probably right now that are Hello, sir. And it’s done. You know what I mean, something written from Chat GPT instilled by a team. I mean, I’m telling you like, it’s this is I’m a firm believer that this is one of the key reasons. Outreach is so bad right now, because everybody’s egos in it. And it’s like, “Hey, how about we put our egos aside?” 

And we realized that if none of us make money, this is why we get laid off. This is like, what do we want? Do we want to put our ego aside and have a job for the next six months? Or do we want to battle on who owns what? And then I’ll be laid off in three months and just let our, you know, CEO just implement AI to do everything full time. So that’s what a lot of companies are doing. It’s just fully AI automated with a bow bot face, you know. 

Bob Woods  20:03

Yeah, Exactly. No one’s fewer and fewer people are writing with their own personalities anymore. They’re copying and pasting out of Chat GPT. Yeah, I think if anything, I mean over the past couple of years and especially after the pandemic, I mean, the number of just pitch pitch emails and connections and pitches and things like that have gone way up on LinkedIn. I think it’s actually worse now because of Chat GPT because these people are thinking that you know, “Oh my God, this is the way to do it, and everything’s gonna be great.” And they just do you know, copy and paste or whatever, and it sucks.

Chet Lovegren  20:45

Yeah, Jen Allen. She delivers a great keynote, kind of highlighting this book, the sales innovation paradox. Zapier is a great tool. It automates a ton of stuff from my content as an entrepreneur, with marketing, from podcasts, workflows to all these things. But what it’s also done is it’s enabled Joe Schmo or Blandy Sandy to go and create some sort of LinkedIn automation that’s flooding people’s DMS with massive copy that nobody’s going to read because it just goes read the person’s LinkedIn profile. 

It’s telling Chat GPT through Zapier integration to read this profile link, when I click this button, generate an email based on this, send it an email and send it in LinkedIn with a connection request. And it’s using some other sort of LinkedIn automation tool, not going to name any names. But to auto add and add a connection node or all these things. It’s just like, “Oh, my gosh the tools that were meant for the good for people who add a trade the use case have been,” you know, it’s like avengers, I was watching Age of Ultron, with my son. 

And Tony, his whole goal is to create a suit of armor around the world. And then the whole conversation as to why not do that as well, that is a big benefit in something we need to protect ourselves from future alien invasions that we know nothing about. What if that falls in the wrong hands? Or who decides that you Tony are the one that has authority on what is good and what is bad or what should be destroyed and what should not be destroyed? And that’s the same thing. Now we see it in these tools. Zapier is great for all of us that had the use case that they created for but then a bunch of people took it and now we’re using it for bad. It’s just it’s ruining everyone.

Bob Woods  22:16

Exactly. And probably the first reference of any Marvel movie or Ironman specifically in this podcast either. So congrats.

Chet Lovegren  22:26

I’m here to police.

Bob Woods  22:29

Exactly, exactly. So actually, my next question kind of spins out of that. I do want to take a bit more of a 30,000 foot view of B2B sales. Let’s talk about the future, especially with this current state that we just built out with the last question, how do you see the future of B2B sales evolving, especially with the increased emphasis on social selling and platforms like LinkedIn?

Chet Lovegren  22:57

Well, it’s a little terrifying actually being someone. It’s terrifying and exciting. I should say. It’s terrifying as someone who still comes from I mean, my first sales job, I was opening up the Yellow Pages and making 300 dials by hand, writing my notes on a piece of paper, right? And I’m not even like, my age does not reflect that workload. You know what I’m saying? I was talking, I was in college making cold calls for a commercial insurance agent. And it was, “Hey, you get paid $100 a day.” If you either book me five appointments or make 300 dials, you have to hit one or the other. 

So it was like, you know, mad, crazy. Now I look at everything that we have. And I’m like, “Wow, this is amazing.” But I also realized that the sales tool side of things is not as powerful as the relationship side. And more and more companies need to start getting into content creation. So I see a huge shift from we’re making a lot of sales because we have great sellers, too. We’re making a lot of sales because we have educating and entertaining content that we’re releasing online. And we’re releasing it online, not just for our LinkedIn audience to boost our LinkedIn company page or follow this vanity metrics. 

But to catch your average seller and sales leader that’s browsing TikTok in their personal time, YouTube shorts, Instagram, Reels, things like that. So I see a huge shift towards more media focus, than sales enablement focus. I wouldn’t be surprised if we started seeing companies like Tinker taking out 10 to 15% of their sales budget, and putting that into a whole media budget, with marketing and starting to do more in that regard. How do we partner with podcasts that already have an audience and maybe get some arbitrage there? mean every month, everybody in their mother that’s on LinkedIn that has over 10,000 followers has a newsletter. 

I get it, but there’s still some visibility opportunities that happen for the people that are part of that big audience. I mean, it’s a funnel, Right? So maybe like me, you know, you have you know, know, three to 8000 people at any given moment that are opening your newsletter, maybe only 500 of them will actually read it, maybe 30 of them will be interested by the company that sponsoring the newsletter in the masthead, and maybe 20 of those people click the link, maybe five of those people will convert. 

And if your historic close rate is 25% benchmark, at least that’s one deal. Right? that one deal. If you get that kind of scale, weekly, you’re closing four deals a month from partnering with someone on a newsletter, you see what I’m saying? So I think there’s going to be a big shift from sales enablement to marketing enablement, through content in media.

Bob Woods  25:38

That’s fascinating. That’s really fascinating. And yet I can, I can most definitely see that. I mean, as everybody is becoming more and more media savvy all the time, because we’re, quite frankly, we’re just being forced into it, because it’s the way that the world is nowadays. And I mean, being in front of that I think is really important. And, you know, thankfully for people like me, social angle and way, and while we concentrate on LinkedIn, we do recommend, you know, especially Instagram we are, we have more than dipped our toe into TikTok as well. 

And no, we don’t dance on TikTok, but, um, you know, just being, you know, being there when the opportunity presents itself. And, you know, this is where the algorithms on on those places workout, because hopefully, your stuff is servicing with the people who, you know, who have shown interest in this and, you know, hopefully you will, you know, you’ll appear to them at the right time with a good piece of quality information, and they’ll want to check you out more.

Chet Lovegren  26:45

And it opens a whole new revenue stream. If I myself, think about this, I have my podcasts, I have some entertainment content, I have also my post Tiktok What if I could 10x that what if I had the funds to 10x that and I almost have like a sales show, like a comedy sales show kinda like what corporate bro did. But maybe like a web series, like a 10 minute web series that I do. And we release episodes every week. And we have different seasons. Not only do we have that, but then we have like a, like kill Tony the podcast where comedians get pulled out of a bucket, and they go up to 60 seconds of comedy, and then the panel roasts them and judges them. 

And it’s really funny and hectic and crazy, not a PC show. So don’t use that as a judgment character. It’s just a show as a show. I know of that as a format. What if we did that for cold calling, where we get cold callers to come up? You know, whether it’s virtual or in person, we do a podcast or like, there’s so many different types of entertainment, but also educating media that you could produce. What if then you became a company that also in addition to what it does for your B2B sales for whatever you’re trying to accomplish, you’re charging people a $10 month subscription to your entertainment service. 

That either they can stream these episodes, this content stream, the podcast, now you have a whole consumer side of things like if in the next year, lavender does not take all the content that they’re doing and keep creating it at scale. And then basically charge people 999 a month to watch lavender land streaming service and all their content, their shows, their episodes and everything, I would be surprised. Think about the revenue that could generate if you have, you know, 10,000 people that buy that streaming service, and now you’re the Netflix for B2B sales and marketing, right? Like it’s just a wild concept. 

But we’re starting to see things like that with companies that are producing weekly, LinkedIn lives. And then they have a sales interview series. And then they’re going to events and doing pranks and all these other things. People like that to like sales and marketing. Why did Silicon Valley? Why was this such a great show? Because there are a bunch of people that work in tech that are like, this is what it’s like working at a startup. It’s amazing. I mean, the office, one of the greatest TV shows in the world, was basically following office life, you know what I’m saying? 

So it’s like there is a need for it, there’s an opportunity for it. I think more companies are going to move towards it because we like sales. We kinda used to be cheeky to make a sales show five years ago, people were like, “Oh, we don’t wanna watch shows about sales.” We do that every day. Now people like that because they feel like that’s me. You know what? They love it when they buy into it so I think there’s going to be a huge huge push towards more sales media.

Bob Woods  29:13

Yeah, that’s an idea that I haven’t thought of but now I’m thinking about it after your prompting there, social sales link tv.com. 

Chet Lovegren  29:25

There you go.

Bob Woods  29:29

You know, so it’s funny because there was a time when I was working on something for tic tac specifically and I dropped it and now I think I may bring it back but I want to do something like Law and Order social selling unit. There you go. Yeah. And you know, come up with like, you know, failed sales, outreach things and then show how social selling is better or you know, something like that if it was in the beginning stages, as you could probably tell but I’ve been, you know, come up with that hook where the couple comes up on the dead body. 

Except instead of that it is, you know, someone opening up their LinkedIn and seeing an awful pitch or something like that. And, you know, taking it from there. But I mean, I could see. And obviously, that’s just one little idea. But you know, all of these different ways to do edutainment, which is what we did in another podcast on edutainment to really promote what you’re doing and to, and to educate people as well. So that, you know, again, you’ll be seen as a funny expert, but you’ll be seen as an expert nonetheless.  

Chet Lovegren 30:40

Yeah, I mean in my SDR to AE program, you can listen to my sales podcast for free, or my founders podcast, if you want, I have free content. But part of what you get in the program, aside from the training and the group coaching and all that other stuff, is you get access to content that we don’t publish on TikTok, that is entertaining. You also like behind the scenes stuff that maybe sales leaders don’t want to say about how to actually get promoted at EA that they don’t want to say publicly online, because it’s about playing the game. 

But they’ll say to a private audience, you get access to also a podcast, a video podcast that is bite sized content, five to 10 minute episodes, every two every well, it’s two days a week, so every three days, just about. So that’s part of the paid content monthly that you’re getting now. So there’s a version of that that we already have. Now, I would love to have my own streaming platform. But there you go, you know, 499 a month with ads, 1299.

And without sponsorships to others. Other channel partners, you know what I mean? “Hey, we integrate to the sales engagement platform, they can pay us five grand a month to run ads on this version of our edutainment platform,” you know that we have that we supplement, I really do think that media, and I’m already seeing a lot of people. I’m in Los Angeles. So I’m seeing a lot of people that work in the entertainment industry, in the media industry move into marketing teams at b2b companies, because they’re trying to scale up those efforts and figure it out. Okay, How does Viacom do it? You know, right.

Bob Woods  32:00

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So I think we’re gonna go ahead and wrap up. But we always end with, with my traditional question, and that’s, you know, everybody loves those one thing you can do right now and take away. So what’s the one thing that we all as salespeople can do right now, to ensure consistent management, consistent messaging? Genuine messaging, I mean, however, you want to take that, but I mean, if you had like one piece of advice that someone could like, just go out immediately and just jump all over? What would that be?

Chet Lovegren  32:36

So sales leaders should be doing this. But sometimes we know that reps work at companies where their sales leaders already have enough on their plate, or this is just not something that they’re going to do. It’s like when you talk to a sales rep, and you’re like, “Well, what’s your sales engagement platform?” Like we just work out of our CRM, you’re like, “What, how do you even do that?” If you’re doing outbound sales blows your mind, right? But sales leaders should be doing this? If not, then sales reps, you should be doing this. 

But if you’re trying to figure out how do I create consistent brand messaging, how do I create consistent message resonance with my buyer personas, go talk to five cs people. Go listen to five QBR calls, go to Marketing and talk to five people in marketing, or have five conversations with marketing. If it’s a one or two person department. If you’re in like a startup, see what marketing is saying about what they think your buyer persona is, see what the real world scenario is as it pertains to your product or services from CSMs. 

Marry the two, eat the fish, spit out the bones, that’s your perfect world. I think not enough people do that. Salespeople start and they talk to other salespeople about how to be the best. Do you think if I’m a competitive colleague, who’s either an eighth year in SDR, I’m gonna tell you my secret sauce? Heck, No. We wish those were all the people. But Simon Sinek has a great talk about this high performer high trust, you can find that person by going into any team and asking who’s the Aihole. Right? And that person’s not going to share their secrets of success with you. 

So in order to get that it baffles me that not enough salespeople and sales leaders go get input from the people that are working on the other two sides of the spectrum of the person that they’re trying to tell a before and after bridge story framework. When we talk about storytelling and sales, you’re talking about current state versus desired future state. CS works with desired future state marketing works with before state. You’re the one that’s telling the story in the middle, go talk to the two different departments, figure out the story. Find a healthy medium, and then portray that to your buyer persona and your outreach and in your sales conversations.

Bob Woods  34:29

What an awesome way to wrap up this episode except for if people want to learn more about you and your offerings Chet, Where can they go?

Chet Lovegren  34:40

LinkedIn is a good spot. You can also check everything out on my website, www.thesalesdocdlcrx.com. We have all of our resources free downloads. You have to go to LinkedIn to get access to the programs that we offer. We don’t put those on the website. The website is more B2B facing So I do recommend just going to LinkedIn. But if you want to look at all the resources, podcasts, the downloads, the books, the blogs, the webinars, all that stuff, you can just go to my website, but I recommend just connect with me on LinkedIn. 

If you don’t send me a spam message, I accept any connection requests that’s relevant when you’re trying to learn. There’s a reason I’m not a huge I don’t have a huge following because I do say no to a lot of them, but if it’s relevant, you said, “Hey, I listen to you on social sales link want to connect with you send me a message,” I respond to most DMS, if they’re relevant.

Bob Woods  35:28

Sounds great. Sounds great. And also a great message about just leaving the spam alone too. That’s what everybody should do. So with that sales, Dr. Chet Lovegren, Thanks for joining us, and giving us the prescription for sales messaging, and thank you for streaming this episode of making sales social. So remember, when you’re out and about this week, be sure to make your sales social. 

Outro 43:58

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