Episode 251: Best of Making Sales Social LIVE

Intro 00:01

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.

Bob Woods  00:24

Hey, thank you for joining us for this special episode of “The Making Sales Social Podcast.” So I love everything about podcasting. The opportunity to deliver to you quality content that you could use in your sales efforts that will hopefully bring you even more success is something I really dig for lack of a better phrase. And we get to do that twice a week here on making sales social. One episode each week that we do is actually the recorded version of our making sales social live sessions that Brynne and I host each week on LinkedIn and other social platforms.

The other one focuses on interviews and conversations both Brynne and I have had with voices and experts in sales, marketing and business. In this special kind of wrap up episode, we have some highlights from those making sales, social live sessions that we do every week. They’re always fun rocking and freewheeling. At the same time though, we get to share valuable tips, strategies and tactics about using LinkedIn and social selling. 

We’re going to start by discussing how to use social selling after the sale to boost customer loyalty and repeat business. We discussed in “Episode 177 Ways that you can take social selling beyond getting the initial sales conversation started,” so that you can keep customers which you know, that’s a good thing. We can’t bring you all seven. But here’s one you might not have thought of.

Brynne Tillman  02:00

Absolutely, nurturing is a big deal. And there are so many reasons. Number one, we absolutely want to make sure that we are always visible to our clients, for more business for internal referrals and ultimately, referrals externally. But the most important thing here is that we are staying top of mind, we’re nurturing, we’re making our clients feel valued. And not only will that create loyalty, but repeat business as well.

Bob Woods  02:37

Absolutely, absolutely. So now let’s get into those seven ways. And number one is something that you’ve heard us say in several other ways, but it can be used very effectively here as well. Asking for votes specifically on LinkedIn polls.

Brynne Tillman  02:53

This is such a great way to get engagement, it’s easy. It’s a one click right. So if we start, first of all, by taking inventory of our connections, and taking a look at all of the clients that were connected to the current or past, ultimately what we want to do is keep them engaged. So the polls, Bob, as you say, a really a great way to do this. Make sure you’re not asking too vulnerable of a question here where they may not want to share their biggest challenge publicly.

But it may be you know, what’s the number one priority that you have in your business going forward? Based on what you do? Don’t make them feel like it’s a pitch or a leading question, but it should give you some insights that can help you continue the conversation, right? And so there’s lots of ways to use this poll. I just want to back up for one second here because I said something and I recognise we’ve got a gap that we need to fill first. 

Which is we’ve got to make sure that you know what clients are connected to, and connect to the ones that you’re not connected to. So taking inventory, although it is not on our top seven list really should be ground zero, right? It really should be as we go through this, we need to know who it is that we want to engage with. So exporting your connections are searching your first degree connections and recognising who what clients you are connected to and what ones you’re not. 

And you can compare CRM to your LinkedIn connections. You can pull out your business cards, whatever it is that you do look at your emails. But ultimately, in order to nurture those connections to build that customer loyalty and get that repeat business, we need to be connected to them so that that should be ground zero.

Bob Woods  04:48

Next we’ll look at “Episode 188” Where we discussed a crucial part of your LinkedIn strategy, the LinkedIn profile. It’s the foundation for everything you do on LinkedIn, as you’re driving people to your profile with just about every action you take on the platform, a big part of your profile is the summary section. 

The evolution of your profile, I think, is always interesting to see as it goes and everything else. And especially as thoughts change about what things are all about on LinkedIn. So from here on out, it’s all about the content in the about section, because that is what you are focused on. So the first thing is, you need to open up by writing about your audience of prospects’ challenges or challenges first. 

So again, like Brynne said, “Beginning this isn’t about you, this is about them, you’re looking to draw them in,” because you want to create curiosity with your audience, and begin to kind of get them thinking a little bit differently about their situation, and hopefully thinking just just in this little part that, “Hey, maybe this is the person who can help me with my problem.” 

Brynne Tillman  06:05

So I love that. And I think the concept there, which we talk about all the time, is instead of leading with your solution, we’re leading to your solution. So when we talk about the challenge, first, we’re resonating with them, they’re saying, “Oh, my gosh, he gets me she gets me right. And I fit this.” So take a look at the high level of the challenge, that kind of that common denominator challenge that your prospects face that you solve? 

Now don’t talk about your solution yet, I’m going to push it to Bob for the next I guess, element in the formula. Just remember, if you lead with your solution, you are saying we help companies do this. If I do this, we will get there. But we have to earn the right for them to care about us helping them. So Bob, what is section number two in the about section?

Bob Woods  07:06

And they will start caring about what you do when you teach them something new? Oh.  

Brynne Tillman  07:16

Oh, that’s a big mic drop moment.

Bob Woods  07:18

Oh, my. And I was just thinking about the fact that it rhymed to be honest with you. But I’m.

Brynne Tillman  07:25

So this is recorded.

Bob Woods  07:28

Yeah, I know. It’s another t-shirt, I’m going to be cranking out on my Etsy store. Yeah, seriously, teach them something new. Teach them something about what you do and what you can do for them. That because they’re there, they may know about it, they probably don’t know about it. So use this opportunity to genuinely teach them something new. Add to add to immediately start adding value. Because when Brynne talks about how we need to gain that right, we do that through adding value and then we can start talking about ourselves but we’re still teaching them something new, Brynne. 

AI, Chat GPT,Bard, Quad generative AI is taking the world by storm, and the world of sales is getting caught up in the whole thing. We add making sales social, and by extension, social sales link are embracing it. And to that end, I’ve developed a framework that will help you form chats with Chat GPT, that really takes advantage of what it can do for you. There’s also an ebook associated with this episode, Episode 212 you can actually download it at socialsaleslink.com/crisp. C-R-I-S-P, again, that socialsaleslink.com/crisp. 

So in “Episode 212”, I discussed what you can do with the crisp framework. So think of chat GPT as an incredibly knowledgeable and dedicated assistant that really wants to help you. But it has no clue as to what you truly need. It wants to help and it will try its best to help but you need to prompt it in the right way. So it’ll focus on generating the right answer or answers for your needs. So before you even get into thinking about writing prompts, you need to have a goal for using it. 

Do you want to develop a piece of content? What type of content should you even develop? Do you want it to analyze a potential market for your sales efforts? Do you want it to simulate a conversation with a decision maker? These are literally just a few ways that you can use generative AI in sales and marketing. So think of prompts specifically as Chat GPT’s chatty compass or the way I kind of like Think of it is similar to a writer’s room in Hollywood. 

Although those aren’t really functioning right now. Prompts help you kickstart and workshop ideas, navigate replies that Chat GPT gives you and provide context to jazz up our exchanges as well. So before we get into the absolute nitty gritty of crisp, let’s talk just a little bit about chat sessions in general. So when you go into Chat GPT, you’ll be asked to generate a new chat each time you do generate that new chat. Think of it as like you’re starting a science fiction episode or a fiction book, for example, you are creating a world with each chat that you start. 

So if you get done with one chat, and you start a new Chat GPT is not going to refer back to any other chat that you’ve done, you are creating a new world each time that you are clicking on a new chat. And that’s very important to remember. So as a salesperson, sales manager or marketer, your Chat GPT prompts need to be written in a way that combines both your creativity, and you need a solid template that you can use. And that is where CRISP comes in. So you ideally want to do five separate but interrelated things. 

And CRISP does this because it stands for context, role, inspiration, scope, and prohibitions. And prohibitions are actually really important because along with all those prohibitions, it especially can really help you focus on what you want out of Chat GPT. And again, you can get details about the crisp framework at socialsaleslink.com all one word slash crisp. See our ISP. In “Episode 220” Brynne took on the top 10 Questions salespeople have asked her about LinkedIn and social selling. And while the entire episode is worth a listen, here’s what everything about social selling is ultimately all about.

Brynne Tillman  12:11

We want to start with detaching from what the prospect is worth to you, and attached to what you are worth to the prospect. What this means is our intentions need to shift, we need to be a resource, we need to make sure that we are out there bringing value to our prospects and our influencers in our network that were seen as someone who is worth the time right, we need to earn the right to get sales conversations. 

And the way we do that is by bringing great value. So too aggressive is the connecting pitch. When you are telling them how you can help them it’s too aggressive. When you’re actually helping them you’re earning the right to get conversations. Remember, this is about really building trust and credibility, earning the right to get the sales call, we need to slow down our outreach to speed up our outcome. Number four, what’s the best way to optimize my LinkedIn profile for sales? 

Well, we’re going to continue that same conversation, which is detach from your selling and attach from your giving your thought leadership, your resource. Make sure that your profile is this landing page of nuggets, that when your buyers get here, they learn so much, they can’t wait to get on a call with you because they know if they can learn this in their in just in your profile. Imagine what they’re going to get when they get on the call with you. So make sure you convert your profile from a resume to a resource resource.

Bob Woods  14:02

As this is a year end episode, we should be looking to the future, that is 2024, Brynne got an incredibly valuable chance to do just that at LinkedIn headquarters towards the end of 2023. We discussed in “Episode 227” what she learned and here’s just a little taste of that.

Brynne Tillman  14:25

LinkedIn has and you may know this number. I don’t even know Sales Navigator has a dozen plus filters that allow you to really break down a list to get to your exact targeted market. But it’s a lot there’s a lot of combinations that you can do, like,  for example, posted on LinkedIn in the last 30 days and got a new job in the last 90 days and if you don’t know How to leverage that search. You may be missing opportunities. 

Well, with now the chat AI ability where you can just conversationally type into Chat GPT and get answers. LinkedIn AI will now roll out and I believe it’ll be in February, the ability to say I’m looking for sales leaders that are new at a company that are active on LinkedIn that have a team of 10 or more. So you can actually go in and chat about what you’re looking for. And it will create that search for you with all the right filters.  

Bob Woods  15:48

Wow, I mean, especially because if you’re on Sales Navigator, and by the way, Brynne and I purposely haven’t talked about this stuff, because I wanted to react like how you guys are acting. So this is the first time that I’m hearing this stuff, too. And I think that that’s really cool. I think this is really cool. 

Because you can get lost in the filters, I mean, you can get so lost in the filters, trying to like, select one thing, and then not another thing. And then unselect yet I mean, there are so many different permutations for them to have an AI that will go okay, well, then let’s set our filters, do this, this and have it do all that for you is just amazing. It’s just incredible.

Brynne Tillman  16:30

Yeah, and let’s say you look at that list and say, “Oh my gosh, I really don’t want consultants in this list,” you can then type in take out consultants, and it will exclude them from the list. So you don’t have to write like, it’s really nice. Now, what it doesn’t have are additional filters. So if they don’t have a filter to match your conversational chat, it will tighten up the search. So for example, they don’t have gender. So you can’t say I’m looking for female entrepreneurs. It can’t filter females because it doesn’t have that in its search capabilities. 

So it is still limited to the filters that they have. But their filters are exceptional. The second one, I’m going to say, is going to transform the level of selling that we can do today. So Bob, you and I teach a lot of social listening. We teach a lot about researching your client before you get on a call, you know look at their Google them. Google the company, look at the blog posts and the news on their website, look at their company page. 

I mean, there could be a half hour 40 minutes worth of research. Before you hop on a call. It is now down to about 30 seconds. Amazing. I know. So you click a toggle or a button, not sure how it’s rolling out. And LinkedIn will now go out, pull public financial reports. Anything on google anything public, not only serve it to you in 30 seconds, but give you bulleted highlights based on the information that they bolds.

Bob Woods  18:39

Wow. Yeah, boom. Mic drop. Absolutely.

Brynne Tillman  18:44

So I know that you have a healthy obsession with AI Well, it’s you know, and you’ve done an enormous amount of work in really perfecting prompt engine prompting, right like you, you’re a social selling prompt engineer. And you’ve really spent a lot of time doing that. I imagine now, from a social listening perspective, being able to pull that information in without any prompt engineer. 

Yeah. Right. Like, not that I’m putting you out of business. I’m certainly no, but clearly, I yeah, I guess the path I was going is the hours that it takes. And the amount of work that goes into creating the right prompts to collect the right data to create the right insights. And it’s not always exactly right for every single company. But you know, with LinkedIn, brilliant engineering and dozens of people working behind the scenes? I really think that this is a huge win. Just amazing.

Bob Woods  20:10

With that, We’re going to close this Special Episode of Making Sales Social. Brynne and I always have a great time with these shows, especially because you get to join us in the comment section. So feel free to join us on LinkedIn acts, formerly known as Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook each week as we bring you what you need to know about LinkedIn and social selling. And like I said, we even take your questions as well. 

You can also check out our previous shows on the very podcast platform that you’re listening to this episode on. And hopefully you’re already following or subscribing to this very Podcast. I’m Bob Woods of Social Sales Link. Here’s hoping your 2023 was a success, and that 2020 either meets or exceeds your wildest expectations. So when you’re out and about throughout 2024 Make sure that you’re making your sales social. 

Outro  21:06

Don’t miss an episode, visit socialsaleslink.com/podcast. Leave a review down below. Tell us what you think, what you learned, and what you want to hear from us next, register for free resources at LinkedInlibrary.com You can also listen to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website socialsaleslink.com for more information.