Episode 274: Social Sales Accelerator: Scaling Your Independent Business
Welcome back to Making Sales Social! In today’s episode, host Brynne Tillman sits down with Bradley Jacobs, founder and CEO of Milance. Milance supports independent business owners, entrepreneurs, and fractional executives in their business development efforts. Brynne is excited to explore how Bradley addresses one of the biggest challenges faced by independents: scaling their businesses.
Bradley shares his insights into combining social media with productive selling techniques, emphasizing the importance of building trust and adding value before selling. Drawing from his own experience, Bradley discusses his journey of building a fractional COO business and the key challenges faced by entrepreneurs in balancing client service with business development.
As the conversation delves deeper, Bradley reveals practical strategies for independent consultants and fractional executives to streamline their business development efforts. He emphasizes the significance of budgeting for sales and marketing tools that automate tasks while still delivering results. Bradley also introduces Milance’s unique approach to curating targeted lists of potential clients, saving time and energy for busy professionals.
Throughout the episode, Brynne and Bradley discuss personalized outreach on platforms like LinkedIn and highlight the transformative potential of leveraging tools like Milance to identify and engage with high-value prospects effectively.
Tune in to discover actionable insights and strategies for scaling your independent business in today’s competitive landscape. Don’t miss out on this dynamic conversation between two sales experts!
View Transcript
Intro
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
They’re like bass.
Bradley Jacobs
awesome
Brynne Tillman
Welcome back to Making sales social today. I am so excited to bring you Bradley Jacobs, who’s the founder and CEO of Milance.
Brynne Tillman
My land supports business development efforts for independent business owners, entrepreneurs, and fractional executives. One of the reasons I’m really excited to have Bradley here today is so much of our business when we are Independents relies on
Brynne Tillman
only us. There’s no one else to discuss things with. There’s nowhere to run ideas off of someone. And so I’m excited to talk to Bradley about
Brynne Tillman
how he solves one of the biggest challenges, which is, How do independent consultants, fractional executives grow their business. Bradley, welcome to the show.
Brynne Tillman
So the first question we ask all of our guests is, What does making sales social mean to you
Bradley Jacobs
for me. It’s combining social media which we’re all very accustomed to and selling in a productive and complimentary way. So I think about it as engaging on Linkedin, and that’s really my social media platform of choice. I think it is yours as well where? Right? So I’m I’m publishing content. But I’m also really engaging with my community on Linkedin
Bradley Jacobs
in a way where I’m building trust. I’m building legitimacy. I’m adding value. And then there’s this opportunity to sell. But I’m not selling first. So it’s really combining that social media component with yes, I’m adding value. And you’re seeing the value that I can add. So you may want to buy from me.
Brynne Tillman
I love that. I love that. So you know, I wanna talk to you as we move into this conversation around, helping the the entrepreneur and the fractional executive grow.
Brynne Tillman
Your background. So for 4 and a half years you built your own fractional coo business. Can you talk a little bit about that journey.
Bradley Jacobs
Yeah, I mean, I’ll be honest. I kind of fell into it. I had left Uber. I was launching new markets and running new business lines at Uber, and I once I quit. I was like, I have to do something on my own. I’m just. I’m ready. And so I thought to myself, What if I find
Bradley Jacobs
some part time work while I kind of figure out what I’m going to do?
Bradley Jacobs
And I really just reached out to a bunch of people both in my network and on Linkedin. And I said, Hey, I left Uber. But you know this is what I’m capable of doing would love to have a conversation, and 11 of those people said No, or rejected me, but one said, Yes, let’s have a conversation, and that turned out to be my first client. It was 25 HA week. I was making about 25 KA month. It was more than double my Uber salary and half the amount of time.
Bradley Jacobs: and it blew me away. It’s like this feels too good to be true. So let me go see if I can find another client and another client another client, and I was able to, and it was you know, kind of opened my eyes up to a whole new way of working which is
Bradley Jacobs
fueled my passion for my lands today.
Brynne Tillman
So I love that. And what I love is that you did what you are helping other people do, and I always think that gives so much credibility to the conversation and to to bringing you in as a consultant. So
Brynne Tillman
talk about the challenge a little bit that these entrepreneurs and fractional executives are facing today.
Bradley Jacobs
I’d say the biggest one is you’re servicing your clients. You’re collecting payments. You’re delivering all these all this value. And yet you still have to be doing business development. I think that’s just the hardest thing it’s like, how do I find time for all of this stuff that I need to be doing as a business of one.
Bradley Jacobs
right? So I don’t have this team around me, and so that is no doubt the hardest thing. So what happens often is people sprint. They find a client or 2 or 3. They fill up their plate as much as they want, and then they stop doing business development, and they focus on their clients and from a client perspective that’s great.
Bradley Jacobs
But eventually one of those clients, the contract it’s going to end. And then you’re going to have. Wish you’ve been doing business development this whole time. So I think, finding systems that are really working while you’re sleeping where they require only 2030 min, maybe a week of maintenance that are ongoing, I think, is the key for these kind of people that are really businesses of one that just don’t have enough time in the in the week to.
Bradley Jacobs
you know, get all of it done.
Brynne Tillman
So talk to me a little bit about what that might look like like. If someone says, Okay, Bradley, help me develop a system.
Brynne Tillman
What are you? What are you actually focused on?
Bradley Jacobs
I would think first, I would think about a budget right? Every business has a sales and marketing budget and fractional executives are no different. They don’t wanna spend any money and I get it. But we need a budget. So then we’re gonna use that budget for tools that automate or take give us our time back, but still get the job done. So I think about 3 ways that every fractional should be, in my opinion, doing business development each week. It’s one growing your connections on Linkedin.
Bradley Jacobs
It’s posting content to those connections. So now there’s this complimentary. I’m adding new connections. They’re seeing the value and my expertise and then curated.
Bradley Jacobs
thoughtful outreach to a select list of decision-makers that are in your niche that are in a good position to bring you on. And so you can basically, maybe, you know, create one piece of content and chop it up 3 different times, and that’s my Monday, Wednesday, Friday content. I’d use an automated tool to add new connections every single week. You can use, expand your linked help, or one of those
Bradley Jacobs
and then I mean, I’m obviously biased here. I’d use this service like my lance. That basically just gives me a contact list, saying, These are the best people every month for you to reach out to. You can go build your own on sales, navigator, Crunchbase, or Apollo milance does a a perfectly curated list for you for your fractional business, and essentially have those running all in parallel so that could take you maybe only an hour a week.
Bradley Jacobs
and you’d be doing. You’d be having new conversations every single week to build up your. It’s a warm lead list, if you will. So even if your plate is full, you’re still having these conversations, so that when your plate is not full, you have this list of people to reach out to.
Brynne Tillman
So as you’re reaching out. I mean, there are a couple of things that come to my mind. I know that there are rules around what you can do on Linkedin.
Brynne Tillman
how does my lance fit into what LinkedIn permits?
Brynne Tillman
And the second part of that is, how do you personalize
Brynne Tillman
outright reach at scale.
Bradley Jacobs
So my, the way my lance works is we’re basically we’re taking your niche and your ideal customer. And we’re doing a search based on companies that fit your niche have budget and have a gap on their team in your function. So if I’m a fractional Co, we’re making sure that company does not have a Co. Or head of Operations Director of Operations, things like that.
Bradley Jacobs
and where you might even have a warm intro path. So we’ll pull in your LinkedIn connections. You’re gonna give us a downloaded list. So we’re not like scraping Linkedin. We’re not vi violating any terms and conditions there. So you’re gonna give us the list and we’re gonna enrich it.
Bradley Jacobs
And then we’re gonna find the best people for you to reach out to. So you may only reach out to 60, 70, 80 people a month through byelands. But it’s incredibly curated. Right? It’s not like the spray and Prey Random approach. It’s very, very targeted for companies in your niche.
Bradley Jacobs
And then for the second piece, you basically have 2 options. From what I’ve seen, one is you do less personalization. You could bring in first name, and you could bring in company, and you could bring in title, and you can have it automated. That goes out every single week.
Bradley Jacobs
or you can take the time and actually personalize it, which, of course, is, gonna take more time. And those 2 options are one. You do it yourself, and you just spend 20 min every morning writing notes, or you could have an Sdr. Or Va. Do a first draft of that, and I would recommend you review it. But you could certainly pay someone to give you the time back to do the research for you to draft those notes
Bradley Jacobs
and then put them into some sort of outreach campaign.
Brynne Tillman
So when we originally talk so, I am slightly anti-automation with Linkedin. But the value that you bring. I want to emphasize.
Brynne Tillman
which is really curating and coming up with the hottest.
Brynne Tillman
greatest opportunities. So I am never gonna promote the automation side of things necessarily, but I want you to go a little bit deeper and explain how you are really vetting without giving away your secret sauce, of course. But how you’re really vetting and that curated list of 60. And I’m gonna throw out. My recommendation is when you’ve got that list.
Brynne Tillman
make the time. It’s not
Brynne Tillman
significant. If you’re talking about 60, let’s say even you know, what is that? 15 a week? Right, that’s 3 a day.
Brynne Tillman
I when you break it down, and you’ve got this incredible curated list that Bradley and his team help with.
Brynne Tillman
And you now personalize that outreach and make it meaningful. I think this is a killer approach. So talk a little bit a little bit more about that curation pro process, so I’ll use myself as an example. I think it’d be helpful to just walk through a tangible example. So yeah.
Bradley Jacobs
I came. I helped start the Uber freight business. And then I was running our automation teams within Uber freight. So I have all this tech and freight logistics experience. So if I came into Milans, I would say, Okay, I’m in operations. I had this experience in freight logistics. And I’m a start ups Guy right? Even though it was uber. It was a startup within Uber. And I wanna work with early stage startups, anyway. So I would tell Milan’s seed maybe series, a
Bradley Jacobs
early stage freight logistics. And then some sort of technology software marketplace platform.
Bradley Jacobs
And I would focus on the United States. And I’d focus on, you know, maybe 10 to 50 employees. Something like that. And what my lance would do is we would go. Look at all of those companies that meet that criteria. And we can run basically an algorithm to determine. You know, which companies meet those criteria based size, location, industries, keywords, all that kind of stuff.
Bradley Jacobs
And then we can go see who does not have a Co. Who does not have a head of operations and similar titles. And then we can go see who’s recently fundraise. We can go see who’s hiring, which is just general indication of budget. But we can also go see who’s hiring in operations. Maybe someone’s hiring for a Co. Or a fact, or a head of operations, or something like that, which is a great entry point.
Bradley Jacob
and then we can also pull in Bradley’s connection so I can download my Linkedin, upload it into Milans, and all of a sudden. We have this list of companies that don’t have CEOs that have recently fundraised with open jobs, and where I might have intro paths.
Bradley Jacobs
So we’ve combined all of that. And then we’re gonna pull in the founders. In my case, that’s who I want on target the founders, Linkedin. And then we’re gonna do a search publicly for their email.
Bradley Jacobs
If we can find their email great, we find about 3 quarters of the emails, if not no worries. We’ll use Linkedin. And so Bradley’s gonna get a list of 20 companies with all the founders every month that are a good fit for me. So you’re saving me all of this time and energy, and all I’m doing is sending a note to those, let’s say, 60 founders.
Brynne Tillman
So I love this, and you know we run something called prospect by interview. Where we teach our clients to go out to these high-level decision-makers interview them and turn that into content. One of the challenges is the search criteria as great as it is on Linkedin and even better on sales. Navigator
Brynne Tillman
does not do nearly the impact or provide a list that is so ideal and ripe for conversation as what you do. And that’s why, when I saw that I was like, this is really
Brynne Tillman
game changer, what this does. And I, if you’re okay, taking the automated outreach out of the conversation from my perspective.
Brynne Tillman
the point
Brynne Tillman
of what my lance does is
Brynne Tillman
it really is the Sdr.
Brynne Tillman
In a lot of ways right like it is almost a full-time. Sdr. Which could cost you 60, $70,000 a year. Whose job is to do that research and to get you to that.
Brynne Tillman
My lance is app, like, I absolutely doing that job. And and then as that entrepreneur, or solopreneur, or fractional executive.
Brynne Tillman
you need to make the time
Brynne Tillman
for the outreach. But you’ve now saved hundreds of hours, and that’s what blew blows me away.
Brynne Tillman
So I thank you. Kind of for that highlight. The last question I’m gonna ask you is, what question did I not ask you that I should have?
Bradley Jacobs
I think that a lot of people come to this to fractional executives or independent consulting, wondering what’s possible, or can I consult in my area of expertise? Or what does this really look like? And I, wanna, you know, use this platform to share? Basically, if if someone was willing to hire you as a
Bradley Jacobs
right. Clearly, you have a skill set and expertise that you bring to the table that someone else feels is valuable.
Bradley Jacobs
and there’s no reason you can’t do that as an independent as well.
Bradley Jacobs
And so that’s what I tell people is that I didn’t know that I could consult in operations, and I certainly could. And now I’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people in every single function and discipline and experience and a lot of people, if if they do the work from a business development standpoint, and they’re willing to put themselves out there and ask for the numbers
Bradley Jacobs
it works, and you can do it, and you can make it sustainable for as long as you want. And that’s obviously what we’re supporting with milance. But I’m really passionate about this way of working, and it’s certainly possible.
Brynne Tillman
Well, and one of the things that
Brynne Tillman
I thought of when I’m looking at my lands in in impacting the this industry is, you really are allowing people to launch while working
Brynne Tillman
because you’ve taken the major hours out of the business development. And for me, when I launched my company my products were developed based on my sales. So
Brynne Tillman
as you launch a company that you have knowledge, you have the ability to do the work.
Brynne Tillman
It’s the most. The hardest thing is finding qualified leads, finding qualified opportunities and starting conversations.
Brynne Tillman
So I really appreciate that today. How can my audience find you if they’re interested in learning more.
Bradley Jacobs: they can find me on Linkedin Bradley Jacobs. Milance will certainly find me on Linkedin. I post quite a bit, so I’ve I practice what I preach, and then my lance is@milance.co. We also have a free community. So we don’t just have this lead Gen. Thing. That’s a paid tool. So feel free to join our community. And we have workshops and free resources and all this kind of stuff that’s great for people. So yeah, come, check it out. And if you listen to this, I would love to hear from you on Linkedin.
Brynne Tillman
Yeah, let Bradley know you heard him hear.
Brynne Tillman
Well, thank you so much. And to our listeners, when you’re out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.
Outro
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