Episode 248: Marge Martin – Unlocking Growth: Leveraging AI and Social Selling for Business Success

Marge Martin  00:03

Using social selling LinkedIn, other factors of social selling and making sure you can find trust and referrals. To me, let your clients do the selling for you. That’s what it means to me. You can do so much research, giving information about your current clients about competitors.

Intro  00:22

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! 

Brynne Tillman  00:47

Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m excited. I have an OG on the call today. In August of 2011, I connected with Marge Martin. And I was able to learn a ton of marketing and sales tips. And together we kind of grew up using LinkedIn for sales and social selling. And she has expanded her company and into an AI world a little bit and we’re going to talk a lot about that today. But Marge, Welcome to Making Sales Social.

Marge Martin  01:23

Thank you, Brynne. Nice to see you again.

Brynne Tillman  01:27

It’s great to see you too. And we also have met in person. So it’s an addition to having been connected for over 12 years, we’ve actually been able to hug in person. So that’s always fun. That’s always fun. It’s been a while.

Marge Martin  01:43

It has been a while. I think last time we didn’t have grandbabies. Now we each have grandbabies. So so much fun.

Brynne Tillman  01:49

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yes. It’s just fabulous. So let’s well that we start every show asking our guests one question, Which is what does making sales social mean to you? 

Marge Martin  02:03

To me, it’s really using social selling LinkedIn, other factors of social selling, and making sure you can find trust and referrals. And to me, let your clients do the selling for you. That’s what it means to me, you can do so much research. I mean, even just on LinkedIn, right? You can do Boolean research all this and you can find information about your current clients about your competitors. And that’s what it means to me really, I’ll give you an example. We had a client and we had to get in touch with the Chairman of the Board of FedEx. 

Now what’s the chance you’re gonna be able to do that, right? We were able to get on LinkedIn, we were able to understand who his executive assistant was. And then we realized that they didn’t post as much content the way we liked it. And back then they actually wanted information sent to them via fax, not email. So it’s stuff like that, that you can use for social, right, and social selling. And that’s what it means to me is really taking that avenue and finding those resources and those referrals for you and just giving you credibility, and making you a subject matter expert.

Brynne Tillman  03:12

I love that answer. Thank you so much. So let’s jump in. You know, there are a few questions that I’m really excited to talk about. But I’m going to actually start with, how are you using AI to run your business now? And how are you using AI to help your clients run theirs?

Marge Martin  03:31

Okay. Well, one of the things is when you’re smart, and I helped mostly small business owners, high tech companies, probably under 100 employees, okay. And especially as an executive and starting to hire, they just don’t have the time, right. So just like me, I don’t really have the time. So I’m using AI for my clients. And for myself more on research, how am I, what do I want to do? Help me create an outline, I’m going to be writing a book, I’ve used mid journey, and I’m creating some avatars. 

And with AI, you can make them speak and you can do 32nd videos. So that’s how I’m using AI and how my clients are using AI, lunchtime spinner, they’ve got the wrong personas, and they don’t even know so if you tell AI to act like that, that data and look at these three competitors. And tell me what is the number one persona for the buying cycle? It’s amazing what AI will come back and tell you.

Brynne Tillman  04:29

So I love that. How much of the AI I guess are you using and how much are you editing and how are you kind of getting it to capture your voice or the voice of your clients. 

Marge Martin  04:44

So a lot of people don’t know this but in Chat GPT and you can actually tell it in the settings a little bit about yourself and who you focus on and all that. So if you do that, when you do a chat prompt and ask it something it will Come back. So I use it more. I want a blog, let’s say, or I’m writing a case study or have an existing case study that I need to update this year, right? So I just tell it, take this document, and I will ask it to change the tone and take stats for 2022 to 2023. 

And pull it in now a lot of people don’t realize that if you use the Chat GPT, the beam version now, it will bring in things that are relevant now this year, if you don’t, it’s only going to go back I think in 2021, maybe 2022. So I always say make sure you’re using the right. Are you looking for stats? Are you looking for it to create an Excel spreadsheet? There’s different pieces and plugins like Canva? Right? “Hey, I’m developing an ebook cover, please use this.” And you can do it right in chat with the add ons, or add ins, plugins, I guess I should call. 

Brynne Tillman  06:00

So, I love that. And you know, I have not really explored it in Canva too much. Okay. But the idea that, you know, you can create content based on who you are and who you’re selling to is really important. But some of the challenges that a lot of the reasons people come to you, is because they’re really creating content that they want to create, not necessarily content for their persona. So talk about how do you how does someone figure out really truly what their ideal prospect cares about?

Marge Martin  06:42

So you want to do the research, right, and you can use AI to really help you do the research. So you might say, look at these three companies and name them, right, and say, what are the top keywords they’re using? And what are their top clients that they mentioned? Okay, go from there. From there. Now, you can drill down a little further right? And say, based on the content that they’re putting out, and their ads on LinkedIn, and Google, who are they targeting, who’s the title, most likely they’re targeting, and people don’t realize that. 

But that’s the stuff that lets AI do that artwork for you, if you and ideally ourselves, because I used to sell workshops on this right, I would have to do a couple hours research just to make sure I’ve got it right. AI literally sends that in five minutes. If you have the prompt written, right. If you write it incorrectly, you’re gonna get incorrect data back. But it’s just like when you do research on the internet, if you’re looking for the wrong information that is going to bring the wrong information back, you have to make sure you have that very targeted and specific view of what you’re trying to bring back.

Brynne Tillman  07:57

Do you have any tips on prompts or prompt engineering when it comes to social selling? 

Marge Martin  08:03

Yes, so I actually have some prompts there. I just did a Chat GPT and another blog of tips and prompts to use in your business. So some of those examples again, and let me pull it out so that I can actually just make sure I tell you the right little tips on some of these and examples so that if they want it.

Brynne Tillman  08:25

And as you’re looking that up I believe we’ve got lots of resources at rareagent.com/blog Right. 

Marge Martin  08:35

Yes, so but like for a content engine, you know, write a blog post on the topic of an insert that topic for industry and insert industry. That’s an example of it asking, right you ask Chat GPT, or Claude, create a 30 day social media calendar about blank, right? So it’ll actually go out and pull all that information back in for you for researching, right, summarize this financial statement, and insert the company or year and insert inserted or here’s what I like.

You know how we get these research papers, summarize this research paper and give me a list of the key insights and you insert the research paper text and it comes back so for me, I am too busy. I know you are too, Brynne. But to me, if I have a 510 page research paper, I don’t have time to read it all the time. So I just upload it and then or ask it to find the top five insights of that research paper because then when I start doing my email campaigns, etc, I can highlight that. That’s awesome.

Brynne Tillman  09:44

I love that. How accurate are you finding Chat GPT and Claude and barge like how are you finding like some people say sometimes they make stuff up.

Marge Martin  09:55

Now, again, it depends on how you write your prop. All right, you want to make sure you tell it the tone, you want to make sure if it’s the industry, what industry what title, if you want to know the year, bring back. So again, you’re going to have to use Bing and some of those when you go into Chat GPT, and it has to be Chat GPT to be able to get some of the advanced.

Brynne Tillman  10:22

Which is the premium, you have to pay for the premium. Yeah.

 Marge Martin  10:26

But you know, it’s $20, right? I tell people, if you drink and you have a glass of wine, how many glasses of wine do you eat? Go out me, And they’ll say two I said, then you can afford it. So don’t give me a thing that your business isn’t building big enough that you can’t afford it. You can.

Brynne Tillman  10:41

Yeah, you just have to get the ROI from anything. Right you, right. That’s right. So let’s talk a little bit about how you’re using social selling, whether there’s AI in that or not right now to find new business, or how do you help your clients use social selling to get new opportunities?

 Marge Martin  11:01

Well, the neat thing about AI is you can actually ask it to look at LinkedIn profiles, and then pull back information. But for me, I mean, I used it just I’m relaunching my origin again, right after keeping it quiet for three years because the pandemic had really hit my customer base. And now they’re all having have been able to turn it around and they’re having positive cashflow again, right. So for me, it’s just using the social selling of it and taking out creating an email in LinkedIn and sending it to the people that I’ve done business with, or that I’ve been on a podcast with before they’ve been on my podcast, and saying, “Hey, here’s what’s going on. Can you help me,” right?

It could be I look at social media and LinkedIn, I notice an article or see somebody highlighted like an executive. And I go in and look at them. And I realize, “Hey, they’re in my sweet spot. And let me see if I’m connected.” Look at that. I’m connected to Brynne Tillman, I can ask Brynne, maybe hate because you forward a message, or, “Hey, Brynne, I’m going to use your name and an email I sent just be aware that they might reach out to you to ask about me,” right. So that’s how I use it. And again, you can get very good with social selling and LinkedIn.

You can create your own list in there, and then be very targeted. So it could be, believe it or not, a lot of marketing agencies use us rare region, right? So I can go and say, “Okay, I’m looking for a marketing agency that’s under 20 people,” right? That I probably know, they’re going to need some additional resources. And I’m gonna ask them to see, like, white label us. They won’t even know it’s Verizon, but we will help them. So that’s an example of how you social selling for that. And the research and a lot a big part of that is LinkedIn. Sometimes it’s.

Brynne Tillman  12:56

That’s, yeah, yeah, I mean, I have kind of slowed down my use. Since, it’s kind of it’s since X, since Twitter has become X. Yeah, it just isn’t doing the same thing for me. But that might just be my mindset. I’m not sure.

Marge Martin  13:13

I’m not, I’m not really finding much on that. I’m finding more from LinkedIn. And then a lot of these groups, we go out and we meet, you know, networking events are always good. And networking events aren’t just in person anymore. A lot of them are just like zoom. So it makes it so much easier, because you can’t find the time if you’re busy. To jump from your house on a 30 minute call versus driving somewhere. That’s 45 minutes, half an hour than 45 minutes. That’s awesome.

Brynne Tillman  13:46

Yeah, I’m loving back in-person networking. It’s just I just really do love that. Talk a little bit about how important analytics are when you’re driving sales and marketing initiatives.

Marge Martin  13:58

I think it’s very big. And it depends on what you’re using. We use a lot of UTM. So that when we create something on our WordPress site, or if we’re using HubSpot, and all it has the analytics and one of the things you have to understand is, is your messaging really creating the ROI you want? And if not, what do you need to change? So for example, you might be writing blogs, but find that one blog or a couple blogs on a certain topic really isn’t moving the needle? 

Well, either it’s not the right messaging, or people don’t care about that topic right now. Right? Same with your web page. What is on your website, is getting the most traffic. And then for the ads, which ads are working on which ones are not how should you change them? Because you want that ad spend to return right? I’ve seen so many clients in the past that put all this money into ad spend and then I’d say let’s audit that and let’s understand your topic and your call. Call to Action because maybe it’s not aligning with your persona says what’s important in that industry right now. 

Brynne Tillman  15:05

Yeah, I love that. And just for the audience, if you’re listening, UTM code is basically a little snippet of code that gets an ad that gets added to the end of the URL of your link. So it will track who’s clicking on it. And even if someone downloads, you can track where that link came from. So if you have that URL in an email, it has different code than if you had that URL. You know it on your website. So you can track that, I just want to throw that out.

Marge Martin  15:36

Thank you, and you’ve got an example. That is what you might do in an event. And if you don’t have that, UTM, you’re not going to really know for example, you do a webinar, right. And then three months later, an opportunity closes from that, but you really didn’t know where that opportunity came from, because you didn’t track it correctly. If you track it correctly, and you’re in marketing or sales, and you want to go back to your executive team and say I need more budget, you can say, “Look, we did this webinar immediately.” It shows that within 24 hours, we had three people call us, and we met with them. 

And within 45 days, we had an opportunity and within 90 days it closed, if you can take that back to your executives who wouldn’t give you more money. Right, right. It’s all about ROI. Yeah, I mean, I had a client that was doing webinar really wasn’t doing webinars, and we implemented a webinar programme. And it would take 18 months just to get an opportunity identified and closed. And during the webinar, it took it to maybe 90 days under a huge difference. But again, it’s the right topic. And the right people.  

Brynne Tillman  16:49

And the right tracking and follow, right. Absolutely. I love that. So as we come to a close here, Marge, is there any, What is the number one question I should have asked you? I didn’t? 

Marge Martin  17:02

Yeah, you asked me almost everything. Um, how can you create cash conversations?

Brynne Tillman  17:11

Oh, what does that mean? I mean, I could guess what that means. But talk about that a little bit.

Marge Martin  17:15

Cash conversations are good. Who knows someone you want to know? And how are you going to call that person? Because eventually you have to talk to someone for the most part to sell you. Of course, you’re in the B2B world, maybe not. So how are you going to create that conversation that’s going to turn in cash later for you. And that is, just like we did today is using LinkedIn and people you know, and having referrals and getting that and making sure your value statements are there so that if you get a CEO on the phone, because they took it unexpectedly, what are you going to say to keep their attention? So they want to stay on the phone with you? 

Brynne Tillman  18:03

Yes. One tip, what’s one tip, one thing that you teach your clients to say?

Marge Martin  18:07

We do. We do source selling. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that. And it’s.

Brynne Tillman  18:12

I have really somewhere it’s a blue book.

Marge Martin  18:16

Yeah. But it’s really understanding. Whose name can you drop? And what stat or value prop, can you drop in 15 seconds, not 2030 seconds, 15 seconds to get them to talk. And if you don’t have the right person, you can always say, “Well, is there anyone that sits around you or sits around that person that you would recommend that I try to maybe go and talk to could you transfer me to them now?” You’d be amazed at how many people will do that. A lot of people are told nobody will do that on a cold call. Yes, they will if you present it with the right wording.  

Brynne Tillman  18:56

Very interesting. So thank you so much as we wrap this up, if someone is interested in exploring working with you, what would the next step be?

Marge Martin  19:05

Go to rareagent.com on the slider there for our consultation or just contact information. We will be putting some more resources up like I said, we’re just launching the website again, kind of having a three year hiatus now coming back. But we will have a lot of tips and tricks guides. So if you’re doing webinars, if you’re doing events, we’ll have the guides up there to help you develop those and promote those.

Brynne Tillman  19:32

That’s great. Thank you so much. It was great to chat with you again. And as everyone as we wrap this up. Don’t forget when you’re out and about to make your sales social.

Outro  19:45

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