Slow Down Outreach to Speed Up Sales Outcomes (Ep 315)
Why You Need to Slow Down Outreach to Speed Up the Outcome
In sales, we often feel the pressure to “Always Be Closing.” But when we rush the process, we often hit a “broken button”—connecting and immediately pitching. This approach, often called the “pitch slap,” alienates prospects and damages your reputation.
In this episode of Making Sales Social, Brynne Tillman and Bob Woods explain why you must slow down outreach to ultimately speed up your sales results.
The 3 Pillars of Slowing Down
To build genuine relationships that lead to sales, you need to shift from a transaction mindset to a relationship mindset.
- Research Your Prospect: Don’t just glance at a profile; really look. Find common ground, such as shared connections, mutual interests, or recent content they’ve engaged with. As Brynne notes, you wouldn’t walk into a prospect’s office and ignore the awards on their wall—so don’t ignore the digital “awards” on their LinkedIn profile.
- Customize Connection Requests: Never send a blank request. Add a personal note explaining why you want to connect. This triggers the “unread message” notification in their inbox, prompting a conversation rather than just a silent acceptance.
- Leverage Mutual Connections: “Social proximity is life.” If you share a connection, ask for an introduction or permission to name-drop. Saying, “I was chatting with [Name] and they suggested I reach out” instantly warms up a cold call.
The Content Pivot
Another powerful way to slow down is by sharing relevant content before you pitch. For example, if a prospect follows a thought leader like Brené Brown, share a relevant resource or takeaway with them. Ask permission to send a link rather than just dropping it.
By taking these slower, more thoughtful steps, you earn the right to the conversation, building a pipeline that moves faster because it’s built on trust.
View Transcript
Intro
0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): 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. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.
0:00:00 – (Bob Woods): Brynne, there is no easy button when it comes to sales. I mean, we all know that. But even with what we do and what we’re talking about here, there is no easy button, right?
0:00:10 – (Brynne Tillman): There isn’t an easy button, but there is definitely a broken button. And the broken button is when we connect and pitch.
0:00:24 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, Stan Robinson Junior, 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. Welcome, sales and marketing pros to Making Sales Social live coming to you from the social sales link, virtual studios.
0:00:58 – (Bob Woods): I’m Bob Woods. Stan Robinson is off today, but Brynne Tillman is here. How you doing, Brynne?
0:01:05 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m great, Bob. How are you?
0:01:08 – (Bob Woods): I am doing really, really well because we get to talk about something that we talk about a lot, but now we get to actually really address it specifically. So I think it’s a good thing. So for many of us in sales, it’s natural to want to rush through the sales process to get to the close. We pitch too soon. We’re doing the ABC see always be closing thing and so on. For us, though, rushing through things is actually bad.
0:01:38 – (Bob Woods): That’s why we often use the phrase slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome in sales. Sounds counterintuitive, right? But it’s about building relationships, being of value, and providing resources, knowing that the sales will come when the time is right. So, Bryn, there is no easy button when it comes to sales. I mean, we all know that. But even with what we do and what we’re talking about here, there is no easy button. Right?
0:02:08 – (Brynne Tillman): There isn’t an easy button, but there is definitely a broken button. And the broken button is, you know when we connect in pitch because we are, like, so excited that someone accepted our connection request that we’ve got to get it in as fast as possible. And it’s really broken. It’s really a challenge. You know, all of us have been victims of Connect and Pitch. All of us have been victims of connect and spam.
0:02:41 – (Brynne Tillman): Even if it’s not a pitch they scraped your email. And you can see, like, you know, Judy Hayes has a period in her name, so she knows that if someone is sending an automated message, it’s Judi period. She knows it’s been scraped because nobody’s going to type that. So there are. So. And this is all the effect of people wanting to speed it up and speeding it up is such a problem. We want you to start thinking about treating the people on the other side of the message the same way you would if you were on the other side of the table and you would not say, hey, Bob, I’m Brynne Tillman. Nice to meet you. We help clients just like you do x, Y, and Z.
0:03:26 – (Brynne Tillman): You’d be like, what are you talking about? So if I wouldn’t do it in real life, why would I do it here? So Bob and I put together a quick list of a few areas that need to slow it down. So I’m going to toss it back to you to start that list.
0:03:43 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So before we get to that list, just the one little yes and thing that I want to. What Brynne said at the very end, is it’s not only about treating the other people at, you know, like they’re at the other end of the table. It’s also about just treating people how you would want to be treated. Do you want to see this stuff? Do you like being, you know, pitch-slapped?
0:04:07 – (Brynne Tillman): If.
0:04:07 – (Bob Woods): If not, then don’t do it yourself. I mean. I mean, I think it’s that simple. And, you know, adding on to everything Bryn said as well, because that’s obviously very important, too. But if you don’t like it happening to you, don’t do it to other people. I mean, it’s just that simple, I think. And if you do like it happening to you, you know, give us a call. So, yeah.
0:04:32 – (Bob Woods): We got something to sell you. Let’s talk about sales and selling and selling the wrong way. Okay. First of all, slow down your reach to speed up your outcome.
0:04:41 – (Brynne Tillman): Step for outreach.
0:04:44 – (Bob Woods): Oh, did I not say that? Sometimes we breeze through that phrase so fast. Slow it down. Slow down. Okay. I won’t torture you with that. Number one, research your prospect. So I have been through sales training and things like that where they’ll either say, you know, use our script and this is what Cole calling, obviously, use our script. You don’t need to research at all. Just find out what the heck’s going on while you are pushing for the sale or while you are pushing for a meeting, or they’ll say, you know, look them up for, like, two minutes, fill in these blanks in this sheet, and then call people.
0:05:32 – (Bob Woods): Or at that point, You’re talking about potentially LinkedIn and things like that. Now, that’s better. But we’re talking about taking more time than that to really research your prospect, Brynne.
0:05:43 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, and I do often say two things in two minutes before you do a cold outreach. So it’s not a bad thing. But if you really want to connect with someone, don’t put that time limit on. I think that’s what you’re saying, Bob. Just really take a look. And there are so many things we can find out about people, right, from their LinkedIn profile. We can find out if we’ve got mutual connections, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. We can find out what content they’re engaging on.
0:06:09 – (Brynne Tillman): We can find out what influencers they follow. You can look at what their career path has been, and where they’ve worked before. There is so much information that you can find on LinkedIn. Now, I’m going to throw you for a loop for a second, because I’m going to say if you happen to be an Instagram person, you can get some personal information, like where they vacation, how many kids they have, and if they’re a golden retriever or a black lab kind of guy, right?
0:06:39 – (Bob Woods): Like, yep, that’s a really good point.
0:06:41 – (Brynne Tillman): So as much as we teach LinkedIn, there’s definitely a deeper dive into other get-to-know-your prospects a little bit better. But when we started in sales, we would walk into a business, right, that we had an appointment, and we’d look on the walls and we’d see what awards they won, all those things, right? And we would say, hey, we would start our conversation with what we saw on the wall or the trophy in the case.
0:07:16 – (Brynne Tillman): Now we’ve got so much more information that not only do we know they care about it because they hung it on the wall, but they put it in their LinkedIn profile. So by referring back to some of that information, not only are you building stronger rapport because you took the time to look into it, but you’re building a rapport because you can start a conversation around something that matters to them.
0:07:43 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, absolutely. 100%. So the second one actually builds on the first one, and that’s customizing your connection request. And how are you going to customize your connection request? Through the research that you’ve done on your prospect? Oh, my God. It’s so simple to do. It really doesn’t take a lot of time to do, especially because it’s all going to be there on your screen. It’s not like you’re leafing through books or whatever or going to the library to research things.
0:08:13 – (Bob Woods): But customizing your connection request is important because you can show that, you know, you actually care enough about this person, and you’re kind of signaling that, you know, hey, let’s talk about something that we both mutually like or something that I noticed about the person who I’m reaching out to, that I like, or maybe I want to learn more about, while at the same time, you know, hopefully wanting to get a sales conversation started if it makes sense and only at the right time. So, again, slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome, but at the same time, you have to do your outreach at some point. So, I mean, always keep that in mind as well.
0:08:52 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So I love this. And so I think it’s really important. I’m not a big fan of cold calling on LinkedIn, but if you are going to reach out, you need context. Now, a lot of our colleagues will say, no note, just send a connection request with no, because you’ll get a higher chance that they’ll accept your connection request. I personally have not experienced that. For me, the best connection requests have been with a note and that note.
0:09:26 – (Brynne Tillman): And we’re going to go into more. So I don’t want to jump ahead because I tend to do this a little bit, is jump ahead. It’s on our list. But that note is important for a few reasons. Number one, I do believe that if it’s the right note and it’s a note that doesn’t feel like a pitch, you’re more likely to get that connection request. Often in a connection request note, I’ll state something, the reason that I’m reaching out, and I’ll actually say, I invite you to visit my profile, and if you think it makes sense, let’s connect.
0:10:02 – (Brynne Tillman): So now I’ve got them looking at the profile. So if that’s positioned well, that’s going to help. And now I’ve got them learning a little bit more about me and it’s less spammy. I’m, you know, I’m asking permission in a sense. I’m not pushing it. That’s number one. Number two, a year from now, when I’m like, oh, my gosh, how did I meet Bob Woods? Or why did we connect? Or how do we connect? I have that in a note so I can remember number three, and this is really the most important reason from my perspective, is when they accept that connection request because you put in a note, it comes into the inbox as an unread message.
0:10:46 – (Brynne Tillman): So this is going to spark you to continue that conversation even if they don’t respond more than just the accepted connection request.
0:10:57 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. And to those people who are like, oh, you don’t need to send a note with it. Just reach out and connect. You’ll get more and more things. Things like that, are just for me personally. And I’m like, bren, I actually don’t do that. So I don’t know if that’s really the case or not. I will just say that I would rather spend the time and connect with fewer people, but people who are interested in what I do or maybe interested in something that I’ve said or something like that as a result of that connection request rather than playing.
0:11:29 – (Bob Woods): And this is what it is. It’s a numbers game when you’re just connecting without sending a note because you really. You might be putting some thought into it, but I guarantee you you’re going to put more thought into a connection request that has a note than one that doesn’t.
0:11:47 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. And I. You know, it’s interesting. You talk about a numbers game. I often say it’s like you go to a networking meeting and you plot your big pile of business cards. I’m like, hi, Bob, I’m Brynne. I’ll take your card. Hi, Stan. I’m Brynne. I’ll take your card, right? And I grab all these cards, and then I go home and I put a big rubber band around them and I stick them in the corner of my desk. That’s what we’re doing when we’re mass connecting on LinkedIn.
0:12:12 – (Brynne Tillman): It’s just business cards. Right. It’s not relationships. So when you slow it down, you have a better shot at creating conversation, which leads to rapport and relationships.
0:12:25 – (Bob Woods): Right, Absolutely. 100%. So, numero trace, engage in their content, but do it thoughtfully. So there have been, I don’t know how many times when I’ve said, you know, a comment that just says, great post, Stan. Doesn’t cut it. Do you want to know why? Because it doesn’t cut it. There’s no thought behind it. To leave a comment or whatever within their content and to do it thoughtfully, you have to read the post.
0:12:58 – (Bob Woods): You have to have some kind of opinion about the post. Hopefully, you agree with it. And then the third thing is you have to be able to add some type of value to the original post. So whether it’s an article that they link to or maybe an ebook or something like that, there are a couple of different ways to do that. You can agree with the statement. You can what, what, what we call. Yes. And it is from the world of improv. So in other words, agree and then.
0:13:27 – (Bob Woods): And then provide your own insight or just provide an insight that’s related to it, but always improve. You know, it’s. It’s like the old camping maxim. Leave things better than when you got there.
0:13:40 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that.
0:13:43 – (Bob Woods): I just came up with that. We may need to do something. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
0:13:49 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m going to tie that back to the last one if you have a connection request. Right. So you engage, and now you send that connection request and you say, hey, Bob, I really enjoyed your article on ABC. I’d love to connect and continue to follow your content. Now we connect. And now I can also, in the inbox, share that additional piece of content. You know, based on this, you know, I came across a podcast on the same topic based on what you just said. Right.
0:14:18 – (Brynne Tillman): And get that into their inbox as well. So all great stuff. Yeah.
0:14:27 – (Bob Woods): And there are so many different ways to engage as. As well, we just listed a couple, but, you know, again, just make sure that you’re leaving the conversation better than when you found it. I am so going to use that.
0:14:39 – (Brynne Tillman): So there’s an ebook in there?
0:14:42 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah, I think there is. I really do. So the next one is, and this is a point that Brynne brought up before, so I’m going to let her run with this. Leveraging mutual connections is huge. Your warm market.
0:14:58 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. Social proximity is life. Yes, but it’s. A. Jeb Blunt says, the pipe is life. I’m saying social proximity is life. That pipe is life, too.
0:15:10 – (Bob Woods): So.
0:15:11 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, well. But anyway, that said, understand, I just got my tongue-tied. Right? So understanding your pathways and your people to your prospects, gotta write that one down. Is absolutely vital as well. We can identify who knows who we want to know and leverage that relationship. But here’s the shortcut that we can’t do, which is name drop without permission. Hey, Bob, I see you and I are both connected to Stan Robinson.
0:15:47 – (Brynne Tillman): Let’s connect. But Stan doesn’t know. I just dropped his name, and I don’t know how well Bob knows Stan. So we really have to slow down the outreach to speed up the outcome by reaching out. And I’ll say, hey, Stan, I notice you’re connected to Bob Woods. I’m looking to get in front of him. How well do you know him? And he goes, I thought he’s a buddy of mine. We hung out in Nashville together. Right?
0:16:16 – (Brynne Tillman): And so great. That’s, you know, that, you know, when I reach out to him, should I tell him you said hello? Sure. So now I reach out and say, hey, Bob, I was chatting with Stan Robinson. He says hello. And all of a sudden, it’s like we just met in person. An in-person meeting where Stan said, hey, Bob, come on over and meet Brad. Right. It’s really simple to do. Now, if it’s a client that I’ve worked with, I might say, hey, can I mention how we were able to help you?
0:16:47 – (Brynne Tillman): And should I tell him? He said hi. So, hey, Bob. Stan Robinson and I were chatting. Your name came up. He says, hello. I’ve been working with him for the last year on X, Y, and Z, and he thought we should connect. It’s that simple. But now you’re coming in the slowing down. As I reached out to Stan, I didn’t just drop his name. And so that is absolutely foundational to your success.
0:17:11 – (Bob Woods): Yep. Absolutely. So the next one is to nurture your connections. And I’m going to bring in an outdoor thing that I just thought of. So maybe this is another one to add to our. Yeah, exactly. So we’ve all heard of it. And. And I’m probably going to stumble through this because I literally came up with this like, a minute ago. Nature versus nurture. So when you hear that, generally speaking, nature is just like, you know, it’s. What is it is what it is.
0:17:44 – (Bob Woods): Type of thing. Nurturing. I’m sorry.
0:17:47 – (Brynne Tillman): It’s organic. It just happens.
0:17:49 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, it just happens. Exactly. Nurturing is anything but that. You are taking time. You may have a plan. You have the means to. To make something happen and maybe make something might not be the best way to put it. Maybe to encourage something to happen, something that you want. So, yeah, I’m loving that.
0:18:11 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So can I play with it?
0:18:15 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. No, no, no. Absolutely. Like I said, I literally just came up with this.
0:18:19 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love that the nature is organic. It just happens. There’s no real intention.
0:18:24 – (Bob Woods): Yes. Intent, yes.
0:18:26 – (Brynne Tillman): Nurturing is, I’m going to take care of those plants on purpose. I’m not going to just let nature take over. I’m going to water it. I’m going to take care of it, and I’m doing it on purpose. Maybe I even have a schedule that I know every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’m going to go nurture my plants or my connections. I’m loving this. We’re going to have so much fun with this, Bob. We are co-authors to that point. We’ve got to nurture them in a way that’s meaningful to them. Right. So if I have a certain weed killer that I use on some plants, I may have other plants that it could kill.
0:19:10 – (Brynne Tillman): So I have to make sure that I’m nurturing each of my plants in the way that is most productive for each of them. Right. So I have some succulents that don’t need as much water as some other plants. So you have to know, and this is the slowing down, what each of those connections will value in that nurturing.
0:19:38 – (Bob Woods): Wow.
0:19:39 – (Brynne Tillman): Right? Are we? We got something going here, man.
0:19:43 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, we do. And I am glad that you’re the gardening expert because, about the last 45 seconds, I never would have known a thing about it. So keep going.
0:19:50 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, so I’m also going to throw out. This is a total tangent, but this is for the world. One of the best movies ever made is a John Cleese movie called Being There, and he’s Chauncey the Gardener. That’s all I’m going to say. And I’ll say he has totally inspired me to have gardener talks. Anyway, go watch being there. Okay, moving on.
0:20:14 – (Bob Woods): So what Brynne just did, there is something that you should be doing with your customers, and that’s providing recommendations. So who. Although. Although the head.
0:20:28 – (Brynne Tillman): But I like it.
0:20:30 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, no, well, actually, we can branch that out into two types of recommendations. So the one that we were going to talk about is actual LinkedIn recommendations, which obviously are very important, and you should be doing that, but you should also be a resource for your customers if they need something else. Hopefully, you’ll have someone in. In your network that you could recommend them to.
0:20:52 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. Well, on that note, I think. Was it yesterday? I think it was yesterday. I got a wonderful package from Christy Jones for her new book, Selling Your Way In. And so I made a post, and I’m recommending that to my network, both for supporting her, but also because anyone in sales is going to get value from it. So that’s a recommendation right there. Okay, moving on from that, let’s talk about LinkedIn recommendations. Do you want to start or should I start?
0:21:26 – (Bob Woods): You could. You can go ahead and take it.
0:21:28 – (Brynne Tillman): Okay, so there are recommendations two ways. Obviously, we want recommendations, but what we’re talking about is recommending others from a nurturing perspective. But, you know, most people like, well, who am I recommending? My vendors. Sure, if you buy from someone and they’re great, absolutely recommend them. But you can recommend your clients, too. You can recommend a client because they were great to work with because there was some real value in, you know, that they brought to the table, that they made implementation seamless, and that they were great communicators throughout the whole process.
0:22:05 – (Brynne Tillman): And now a couple of things. One, you really solidify some credibility and relationship and rapport with them. It makes it really hard for them to switch vendors later on. But also, you have real estate on their profile, too. So there are lots of reasons to do it, even beyond the nurturing part. But for today, in what we’re talking about, slowing down your outreach, just take some time. Really put together a great recommendation for folks.
0:22:35 – (Bob Woods): Yep. Could not agree more. And then the final one is sharing additional content on a subject that they’ve already shared about, which is, which is great because in that slowdown, your outreach, speeds up your outcome thing, you are sharing something that they’re already interested in. They know that you’re interested in it as well. So that deepens the relationship, the slowing down part. And then hopefully, you know, at some point, if you do this a couple of times and the other person’s like, hey, this person is really jiving with me. I should, I should have a talk with them.
0:23:13 – (Bob Woods): You could then have a talk with them and things kind of go from there. And Bryn’s going to give some specifics, I think, on how to do that.
0:23:21 – (Brynne Tillman): Sure, why not? Yeah. One of my favorites. So there are a lot of ways to do this, and I’m just going to give you my number one new, exciting, interesting way to do this. So let’s say you come across something that’s amazing from Brene Brown. You’re like, oh, this is amazing. You can go to LinkedIn search and this is in the free search where you click on the search bar and you hit enter and you click on your first-degree connections and then you click on followers of Brene Brown and you will get a list of everyone of your first-degree connections that follows Brene Brown. And now we could say, hey, I noticed that you follow Brene Brown. She’s one of my absolute biggest inspirations.
0:24:04 – (Brynne Tillman): I absolutely adore everything she puts out. Recently. Heard her on a podcast or came across a blog post or whatever that is. And by the way, if you’re going to do this at mass, please listen or read whatever it is before you send it. You say, hey, here are a couple of my takeaways. Let me know if you’re interested. I’m happy to send you a link. Don’t send the link, just tell them you’re happy to send the link.
0:24:30 – (Brynne Tillman): You’re asking permission and your statistics of people that ask for the link and actually click through are much higher. We’re probably on, five years ago we did a study, and we probably should do it again, but we reached out to 100 people with the link, 19 clicked through and then 100 people with permission to give them the link, 69 asked for it and 58 clicked through. So obviously that’s slowing down the outreach. Don’t just send it, this is the slowdown. This is an example of why we need to slow down our outreach to speed up the outcome.
0:25:06 – (Brynne Tillman): Because if we send the link, 19 will click through. If we ask permission, 58 will click through. So this is a great way to end this segment, really, is what we say is when you slow down the outreach, you increase the outcome. So when you slow it down, you move, in this case, you move from 19 clicks to 58 clicks. So just that’s, I think I didn’t even realize that we could end it at that point. But that is a perfect full loop on why it’s important to slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome.
0:25:45 – (Brynne Tillman): Bob Woods, as always, this is so much fun.
0:25:47 – (Bob Woods): I’ll let you take so much fun, too much fun. And that when that, folks, was the circle of social selling. So, oh no. God no. Disney will come after us and we will never hear the end of it. So thanks again for joining us for this episode of Making Sales Social Live. If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or X right now, we do this every week, so stick around for our live sessions at those times.
0:26:14 – (Bob Woods): Now, if you’re listening to us on our podcast, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button. If you haven’t done so already, to access all of our previous shows and be alerted when new ones drop, more info about our podcast is available@socialsaleslink.com. podcast and I’ll say that again, slower, because we’re supposed to be slowing down. Socialsaleslink.com podcast so when you are out and about this week and every week, be sure to make your sales social.
0:26:45 – (Bob Woods): Thanks, everybody. Have a great week. Bye bye. 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@linkedinlibrary.com. you can also listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website, socialsaleslink.com for more information.
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