Episode 276: Social Selling Unleashed: Insights from Sales Experts

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Brynne Tillman: Welcome back to making sales social. We interview a ton of experts and thought leaders.

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Brynne Tillman: this one, you’re gonna be surprised because when I say his name. You’re gonna think I’m talking about someone else I am interviewing today. Jeb Blount. Junior.

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Brynne Tillman: so excited he is a digital learning expert. He is a brilliant sales guy. A big shoe to fill, but he’s doing a great job doing it, and I’m excited to talk about how he, the next generation is using the traditional sales outreach, but incorporating social selling. Welcome. Jv. As you’re known internally with all your buddies, and how I was introduced to you

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Jeb Blount Jr: thank you so much for having me on the show. I love social selling and what it can do for the tool belt that Sellers have. I like the conversations that you specifically have around them. So I’ve been following you for a very long time, and for those that don’t know me, I’m taller, better looking. Jump one. So if you wanna find me on Linkedin and social media, you’ll know the difference between the 2. You’ll there’ll be no confusion, but

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voices do sound very similar. So if you haven’t checked out us you’ll look us up on Linkedin, and we’ll get connected. But Brian, I’m I’m so happy to be here. And thank you for letting me

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Jeb Blount Jr: talk on your show. We’ll see what comes out. Yeah. Well, you know, and that’s what’s so fun about these. Well, you know, I met you in person when I was at your studios recording, and I’m gonna be back down again, recording in under a month

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Brynne Tillman: where we’re gonna talk deeper into sales navigator and some deep sales stuff. But today is all about learning from you. So let’s start with the question I ask everyone, which is, what does making sales social mean to you?

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Jeb Blount Jr: The reason that social media exists right is for human connection. That’s why we built the Internet. That’s why we built social media platforms.

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Jeb Blount Jr: And that is really important to UN to fundamentally understand why social media is so important for us as salespeople. It is a way for us to connect humans to humans. And if you’ve ever followed the sales gravy team, or you know any of Jebbles books, you’ll hear say this over and over again. The fastest way to have a sales conversation is to pick up the phone and call somebody

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Jeb Blount Jr: right? And the reason is that human conversation is so powerful both to get a No and a yes, or maybe as quickly as possible. And we’re all we’re about when probability and disciplines. And so social selling to me is utilizing a channel.

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Jeb Blount Jr: You know of the many that we have, and creating authentic human connections on those platforms, whether that’s Facebook, which I used a lot in the field when I sold B 2 B business for a telecommunications company use utilizing Linkedin. Obviously, I use LinkedIn more than any other platform as an A B 2 B salesperson as a marketer, and as our leader of a business division. And you can utilize any of these channels to connect with other people.

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Jeb Blount Jr: So to me, selling social selling is authentically creating connections between yourself and another human being, to have a conversation that helps drive value, which is getting closer to a decision that helps them grow, advance, mitigate, risk, or reduce costs. You know. Get to the next level of their business. That’s what social selling is to me.

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Brynne Tillman: So I love that. And one of the reasons we’re talking today is because we’re gonna talk about how to integrate social selling into the fabric of sales. Right? This is not a stand-alone. You can’t close a complex deal

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Brynne Tillman: with social selling, you can open the conversations, and you can nurture those relationships through social selling. So share with me a little bit about how you use LinkedIn social listening. Let’s start with, building a list of companies that you’d like to go after.

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Jeb Blount Jr: Sure. I mean building a list of companies. There are so many ways to do this and the tools that are available to most sellers, while I say most in, you know, in a large

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Jeb Blount Jr: the company you might have Zoom info! You might have you know, Apollo, or seamless for smaller businesses that have just a few salespeople. This may. This may very well be a manual task that you have to go get done. But the way that I utilize, you know, Linkedin, is, I start with used cases. So I think about this when I think messaging when I think about my ideal customer profile, it’s

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Jeb Blount Jr: what are the businesses that have had success working with me or my company? If I haven’t been in the business for very long, and then, you know, if there’s marketing used cases or case studies, you know, go find those, and the best thing to do is just start with what works

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Jeb Blount Jr: trying. I watch so many salespeople, and I’ve done it myself. We spin wheels trying to figure out we’re like, well, we’ve got a great product. So let’s go find the market. We try and almost entrepreneur our way into finding the right business or the right vertical. And then we throw spaghetti at the wall. We hope something

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Jeb Blount Jr: something hits. And we can start with, okay.

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Jeb Blount Jr: What has worked in the past? And then I utilize Linkedin this way.

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Jeb Blount Jr: Find that company that bought from you and had great success, and you can go find other companies that look exactly like them and smell exactly like them utilizing Linkedin. All you have to do is go to their page, and it’ll show you on the side who they’ve connected with. What do those companies like? It’ll give you 4 or 5 of them right off the bat, and then you just do that a couple of more times. You gotta list. The 10 companies go find the people you wanna talk to because on their pages you can literally on Linkedin.

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Jeb Blount Jr: Search in the people. Section

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Jeb Blount Jr: sales for me like a sales. VP will show up, or the President or the Director of Sales, and I can go connect with them or build a list of them. And that’s typically how I build lists from Linkedin is, you know, find the used case. Find the case. Study that works, and then just go to Linkedin and take. It feels like high-intensity sprints. If you’ve ever followed us. You know we love hips and prospecting sprints.

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Jeb Blount Jr: But I use a Pomodoro timer for 7 to 15 min, and I go find 5 companies that are like the one that I sold to that, had success with what I did and was a great ideal customer profile. I would take 15 min and go find a list of 5 companies. Then.

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Jeb Blount Jr: later on the day, I’ll have another 15-minute block, and I find the people I wanna talk to in those companies. And then, a little bit later, 15 minutes, I go and do some research on maybe 4 of those contacts and find out who they are, how long they’ve been there, and I don’t waste

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Jeb Blount Jr: 3 hours of my day to doing that, but I bang it out, and I’ve got, you know, 10 people that I can go call the next day. That’s how I use it.

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Brynne Tillman: So I love that. And I think the way that you describe that is so tangible like it’s so easy to do. You just go to the page you look at other companies like that. Page. One thing I’ll add to that is when you build that list of people. Look at your social proximity. Do you have any first-degree connections? Or do you have second-degree connections where there are people who might be able to?

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Brynne Tillman: to give you kind of an edge in. Now for me, I tend to slow down my outreach very specifically. So when I do outreach, it’s really, really warm. You tend to do more volume, and there’s no right or wrong. It’s just sort of right, like our personal approach.

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Brynne Tillman: But one of the things that you said, which I think is brilliant. You’ve got 10 people, not hundreds of people. So it’s still honed into the right people, and when you make a call you now have a name that you’re asking for, right? So it’s not, hey? Who runs your sales department? But hey, it’s Jane Smith there

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Brynne Tillman: right? And getting through gatekeepers is easier. And, by the way, if you have a warm connection, so I wanna get to Jane Smith, and I see Jb. Knows Jane and I drop you a note. How well do you know, Jane, this is where I’m looking to get?

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Brynne Tillman: When I talked to her. Should I tell her you said Hello?

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Brynne Tillman: Now, when you get there, hey, Jane? JI was talking to JB. He says, Hello! And now you’ve warmed it up so. I love your pathway, and there are so many different ways in, and that’s very much underutilized, and probably the fastest way to get you know, in our world kind of a pre-qualified list to go after. So I love that

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Jeb Blount Jr: Absolutely. One of the challenges that we, I find when I train sales teams and when we work with sales teams is, that there’s almost the opposite end of that right? So the one side of this is that you don’t know anybody. And you’re just gonna call companies and see who’s in charge. And you didn’t do any research. And you know, you’re essentially just trying to qualify them from ground 0, which in some cases I love doing because it’s a great way to

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Jeb Blount Jr: just sort of. Learn the prospect-looking path get some volume in your calls and get some practice. It’s a great way to shake up the cobwebs in the morning. Just go call random companies and see what you can find.

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Jeb Blount Jr: But when you are dealing with an ideal customer profile, you know what you’re targeting.

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Jeb Blount Jr: What happens in a lot of organizations is they’ll use Zoom info, and then a pool.

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Jeb Blount Jr: Every director of sales or director of HR.

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Jeb Blount Jr: From an ICP categorize inside of Zoom info, and then they’ll just, you know, dive into a list of 500 people and start calling, and they’ll have James, you know, hey? Is Jane there? And they get past the gatekeepers, and they go to the next step. But they didn’t utilize the channels that we have, like Linkedin or the other social channels that you might have, and found some information on Shane, confirming that she.

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Jeb Blount Jr: the director of HR. Or still is in that role? We’re just learning some basic information about their organization. And you dive into a list of 500. And you try and have a valuable conversation with Jane and you never!

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Jeb Blount Jr: You’ve never tried to warm up the conversation from your end. You will find there are a lot of stone walls there, and it’s almost more damaging than having no information and trying to get to Jane than pretending like, you know, Jane, and then knowing nothing about her. So there’s there’s 2 ends of that and utilizing Linkedin to kind of bridge. That middle gap is where I see a lot of organizations and a lot of sellers

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Jeb Blount Jr: cutting corners, and that’s why sales get a lot of it’s a bad name. There are a lot of people who cut corners and they get to a conversation with Jane, and there’s nothing to say, and it sounds like a sales pitch.

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Brynne Tillman: You said something brilliant in there, and I just want to go back to it, which is to start a value conversation. What does that mean to you? And how do you identify what’s gonna be a value?

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Brynne Tillman: to the person you’re calling.

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Jeb Blount Jr: Gosh! There’s so much here in a few minutes. Identifying this first.

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Jeb Blount Jr: I would say, don’t! Don’t overwhelm yourself with 3 P’s. Your perfectionism, procrastination and I’m forgetting my last P. And I’ll I’ll get back to it. But always happens when we’re we’re recording in real time. Live. I’ve forgotten children. My children’s names live so don’t feel good.

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Jeb Blount Jr: One of procrastination and perfectionism and paralysis is well, there we go! What we do is the irony around that paralysis is the word you

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Brynne Tillman: frozen. But anyway.

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Jeb Blount Jr: and you spend time on somebody’s like, and you spend 40 min looking at their profile. Are you trying to do too much research because the odds are James hiding me? Answer the phone. So you know, you don’t need to spend, there’s efficiency and effectiveness. So how do you understand what the value is? Well, first you go to the profile. Just see if they posted anything that’s relevant to what you’re selling and what problems you could solve, that they’re hiring, and a lot of it’s aspirational.

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Jeb Blount Jr: Don’t always look for pain points. Look for places that you can add value to. You know your rocket fuel on top of what they’re currently doing. There’s some momentum there, so you know, can you add to that? And then, of course, pain points. But people don’t typically post on social media, hey? I’m dealing with XYZ. Problems that. Do you know anybody who can help me? That’s not how. If it is people operate that way.

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Jeb Blount Jr: I wouldn’t outbound call, I would just go on Linkedin all day long. But you can find things on Linkedin as well. But part of this is just understanding business like business acumen. If you go read, you know. Go, follow Antheon Orino, a friend of ours, who is just an incredible business human being.

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Jeb Blount Jr: read trade magazines. Go on, you know, Reddit, and find threads and understand the challenges for particular roles. So know their role. That’s social media. Go find the role, and confirm it.

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Jeb Blount Jr: know what they’re dealing with. And you know, there’s typically like 5 things that these people want to get done. Think about the CFO right? They wanna reduce costs. They wanna increase if it because they’re thinking about shareholders and they’re reporting it to the CEO chief marketing officers care about, you know, brand awareness they care about inbound leads and and Mq. They care about, you know, consistency across the organization sales.

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Jeb Blount Jr: What do they care about revenue? Right? They care about meeting their numbers. And so these are all things that you can just know and build messaging off of. But the other thing is, you can also utilize your channels to meet people in their circle.

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Jeb Blount Jr: Who, you know? Hey? I’m dealing with this challenge, and I was talking with Jane about those the other day. I think it’d be great for you to go have a conversation, so there are so many different ways for us to know what value is to them, and then delivering that value as a different, you know, different topic altogether. But when I think about value, I think about what I can do to affect their life positively or change the trajectory of what’s happening in their lives

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Jeb Blount Jr: world. And that’s value.

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Jeb Blount Jr: not. I have a great product, or that I have sales. Group is the best training organization in the world, and we serve the top 25, you know. Smp, 500 companies. It’s not true. I’m just making that up. But you know we serve all of these different companies with Logos, and we’ve got 1,000 hours of training at Salesgroup University, and I give you the whole marketing pitch. But if I talk to Jane DOE in a conversation or a LinkedIn message, this person or I send them an email, Jane doesn’t give up. So I don’t wanna be cussed on your show. But, Jane.

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Jeb Blount Jr: a dang, a darn, a shoot about what I have done and what this company has done on our end. They care about what’s in it for them. So

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Jeb Blount Jr: change that messaging to speak to them as a human being, both in their role and as a business person. So that’s what I there’s so many parts of this that we could just dial. I love that. I love that

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Brynne Tillman: I wanna go back to what you said, cause I feel like we could kind of bridge this gap with

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Brynne Tillman: something you said earlier, is, to go back to your success stories and find out what the challenge they were having before they hired you.

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Brynne Tillman: Because that’s probably the challenge most of your prospects are having.

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Jeb Blount Jr: Yeah. So yeah. And speaking stories right? When you look at the case, that is, they should start with. There was a hero, the company that you worked with. They were in this pro. They had the situation in this problem.

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Jeb Blount Jr: and they didn’t see a way out of it. And then they decided to move forward with a provider like yourself, and that pro that provided a solution that got them out of the untenable situation. And then they had X number of success because they implemented your solution. And that’s just the story that they tell. So whatever that problem was at the beginning. Just speak to that. Most companies will have some kind of similar story you’ll be able to make a connection.

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Brynne Tillman: and chances are if they don’t, you’re probably not a good fit.

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Jeb Blount Jr: and then you can move on.

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Brynne Tillman: This was fantastic. Jv. J. I’m so excited to have had you on here. The last question I’m going to ask you is, what is the question? I should have asked that I didn’t.

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Jeb Blount Jr: The question you should have asked that you didn’t is

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Jeb Blount Jr: well, what drives the real connection between human beings if you’re a sales professional? We talk about this on social calling via phone emails and voicemails. And the thing is authenticity. So when I think about social selling.

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Jeb Blount Jr: One of the key areas that a lot of organizations miss, and a lot of salespeople, miss, is that you’ll be authentic to who you are first, and what I mean by that is, you know, it didn’t have to be like everything personal about your life. You don’t. No one needs to know when you picked your nose for you to be authentic.

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Jeb Blount Jr: but you have to be willing to show that you are learning. You’re on the path that you’re speaking the language. You have to have real conversations with people and learn from them. And a lot of people love it. Sh! When people share mistakes like, hey? I had this conversation, and I missed it. And here’s why I lost and here’s where I think that it could have gotten better if you’re a sales professional, but that journey out there on social media, give yourself some depth

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Jeb Blount Jr: rather than the marketing spiels and the calling on people and saying the 4 sentences that your marketing department put on a brochure. Really think about how you can be authentic in every channel that you have. And so when you think about social selling the the key aspect for me, and what I look for, especially as a leader in a business is.

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Jeb Blount Jr: are you looking to actually connect with me? Or are you looking to transactionally set an appointment because you have a quota to hit?

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Jeb Blount Jr: And then the red. The line that lies right between those 2 things is very thin, and if you can walk it well, you’ll be more successful than most of your peers and most people that you’re around.

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Brynne Tillman: That’s a great way to end this. So if people are interested in learning more about you and sales gravy.

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Brynne Tillman: What should where should they go?

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Jeb Blount Jr: Great! That’s a question you did ask me, and I’m glad you did the best way to engage your sales professional journey and deliver a better presence in any space that you’re in because you developed yourself. The number one investment you should make is in yourself. First, because you have the greatest ROI you can control that. And Bryn, who I love and follow, and has always

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Jeb Blount Jr: the best social selling tips in the world. You know there’s no one better that that you can learn from in this. In this world of social selling. She has

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Jeb Blount Jr: many classes at Salesgravity University and Salesgravy University is the most powerful engines for learning as a sales professional and as a leader. So if you haven’t checked it out. Go to learn.salesgravravy.com. That’s learning dot Salesgravycom. If you haven’t signed up for anything before use the code free course, and I’m sure if Brandon, the show notes below, you can link one of your courses below.

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Jeb Blount Jr: Take that for free, and learn from the best in the business, not just us 2 people sitting here, but from 40 different experts. And that’s the best way to get connected to Salesgravi is, to learn dot Salesgrav.

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Brynne Tillman: Thank you now I am honored to be an instructor at Salesgrave University, but

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Brynne Tillman: I am blown away at the talent beyond

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Brynne Tillman: the people. The Amy Franco’s, the Anthy Inarinos, I mean, you have

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Brynne Tillman: absolutely hands down some of the top sales voices at Salesgrava University, and while I have my own courses I send many people to Salesgrav University because it goes way beyond. And any sales topic you can imagine that you wanna learn about.

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Brynne Tillman: You’ll learn there. Thank you. JVJI hope to see you when I’m back there next month

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Brynne Tillman: recording and for everyone listening when you’re out and about. Don’t forget to make your sales social.