Episode 347: 10 Social Selling Commandments

Intro

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. It’s time for Making Sales Social Live coming to you from the social sales link and virtual studios.

0:01:15 – (Bob Woods): I’m Bob Woods and I’m joined today, as always, by Brynne Tillman and Stan Robinson Jr. How y’all doing today? Hey, good. How are you doing? Absolutely fantastic. Today we’re diving into the ten social selling commandments. So this is both a fresh perspective and a great summary of the principles that guide authentic and effective social selling on LinkedIn. And, you know, just kind of mindset stuff. In general, these commandments are designed to help you build real connections, create value, respect the sales process, and build, you know, relationships because that’s what we’re ultimately all about.

0:01:59 – (Bob Woods): So whether you’re new to social selling or a seasoned pro looking for a refresher, this episode is for you. So unless y’all have anything to add to that, before we get into the list, let’s go ahead and get into the. The tablets or whatever you want to say that have been delivered.

0:02:21 – (Brynne Tillman): Delivered from Mount Sinai.

0:02:23 – (Bob Woods): No, exactly, exactly.

0:02:26 – (Brynne Tillman): Just. Just for the record, these are not official. God.

0:02:30 – (Bob Woods): Oh, we’re having fun. We’re having fun with the Ten Commandments thing. But that being said, these are real. So definitely, definitely follow these.

0:02:44 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, they’re Social Sales Link anointed.

0:02:47 – (Bob Woods): Yes, exactly.

0:02:48 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): There you go.

0:02:49 – (Bob Woods): I like that. That’s a good way to put it. So, number one, the connecting pitch is a bait and switch, which means, in other words, it doesn’t do it. Absolutely don’t do it. Stan, do you want to take that a little bit more?

0:03:08 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Well, connect and pitch, just. Even though it sounds self-explanatory, all of us and everyone watching or listening has gotten LinkedIn invitations, which you accepted, and the next communication you got from that person was A sales pitch. So that’s what we mean by connect and pitch. So one of the things we’re trying to do is help you avoid becoming that guy on LinkedIn that everyone wants to get away from instead of forming a relationship with.

0:03:44 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): So this is one of the. This is the first. Don’t, do not invite someone to connect on LinkedIn. They do you the honor of accepting your connection request and then your next message to them is a pitch about whatever you have to offer. Because that’s probably not why they accepted your invitation, was to get your pitch. Anything you’d like to add, Frank?

0:04:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I do. Because I think that this is the biggest broken commandment that I have seen. Right. So this is what, you know, on a daily basis, as soon as I accept someone’s connection request, they immediately try to sell me. We have to earn the right for someone to want or even have slight curiosity in what we sell. So it really does exactly the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve. When you pitch too soon, you isolate yourself from these folks. They want nothing to do with you. And in fact, you can even get blocked and if you get bad enough, you’ll get shut down. It just doesn’t do what your goal is. Right. So if your goal is to connect and be a resource and share value that leads to your solution, you’re going to be much more successful.

0:05:07 – (Brynne Tillman): So, yes, the connect and pitch is a bait and switch. And it’s really important that you get into the eyes of the consumer of your content and say, if I received this, how would I react to it? We’ve all been victims. We should never be the victimizer.

0:05:27 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. And just remember that when you receive one or if you’re sending it like that, it’s considered a pitch slap, which I think is just the absolute perfect way to describe that. I’ve also heard that used for people who actually use their connection requests to pitch before they even connect with someone. So you can also put that one into that commandment as well and consider that one an absolute. No, no. As well.

0:06:01 – (Bob Woods): So with that, we’re going to go on to number two, which is actually, it feeds into number one, and yet it broadens it at the same time. So treat the person on the other side of the message or conversation or whatever interaction that you’re having the same way you would if they were on the other side of the table. I think that’s important because I do think that when you’re kind of blasting things out in general, and you are, and you don’t have another person physically there with you, you may feel kind of emboldened, kind of, you know, a little more chippy than you would normally be. And you know, you may connect and pitch, or you may want to connect and pitch, or you may want to be more bold, more pushy, more proverbial and stereotypical. And forgive me, but everyone knows this, knows this one to be the stereotypical finger-snapping, used car salesman type of person.

0:07:00 – (Bob Woods): Now would you do that if they were on the other side of the table physically looking at you when you’re doing whatever kind of communication you are? Most people would say no. And you certainly more than likely would not want to be treated like that as well. So remember that you know, even though you’re on social and you know you’re using technology to reach out to people and everything else, you are reaching out to people.

0:07:28 – (Bob Woods): So always keep that in mind. And whatever it is that you’re doing, just think to yourself, is this something that I would want to receive?

0:07:38 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m just going to piggyback on that. And, often, if we can stop thinking of them as a lead, but think of them as a human being, we’re going to handle our communication in a much more effective way. So when we talk about the other side of the table, picture yourself at a networking meeting. What is it that you would say if you met someone? You would not immediately walk up and go, hey, Stan, I’m Brynne Tillman. We help people just like you do X, Y and Z.

0:08:12 – (Brynne Tillman): Are you interested in having a demo of our product? No, we would never, we would get kicked out of the event. So we, you know, it is so important that we embrace the, as Bob said, that we were embracing the human being on the other side of this message. So, Stan, want to round that out?

0:08:38 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yep. Just a quick yes. And because totally agree. So much of what we’re talking about has to do with your attitude and your mindset as far as who you’re dealing with. As Brynne said, one thing or one way that this helps me is if I have trouble thinking about how to word a message to someone. Okay. Early in the relationship, before we start thinking about what we have to offer them what would I say if I was standing in front of the person?

0:09:10 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): And then a lot of times it just gets a lot easier and much more conversational. So it helps some of us who have a tendency to overthink what to say. Just ask yourself, what would I say if I was standing in front of Bob?

0:09:24 – (Brynne Tillman): It’s a perfect way to think about it. I Love that.

0:09:27 – (Bob Woods): That is. That is absolutely perfect. So number three, and we’re going to let Brynn run with this one because this is one of her original phrases. And I think it’s brilliant. Slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome. Actually, when you think about it, it’s like that doesn’t make sense. But when, when Brynn explains it to you, it makes perfect sense.

0:09:50 – (Brynne Tillman): So I’ll start by when I was at Outbound, the way Jeb Blount introduced me, he’s like, I teach how to speed cell cold calling, you know, quickly, quickly. Brynne teaches how to slow cells. And although. And I’m good with that, right? I’m really good with that. And the reason I love this is it comes back to earning the right to have the conversation. We personalize more, we learn who is it that they follow, what content they care about, what industry they serve, and what’s going on in their world.

0:10:38 – (Brynne Tillman): And we slow it down following this connect and pitch and following the speed to sell. This is really about pacing yourself to have the right conversations that engage your buyers. And that’s the key here, right? If you were in person, as Stan mentioned, and you’re in person and you’re having a conversation with them, it’ll lead eventually to a conversation around your solution if the opportunity arises.

0:11:22 – (Brynne Tillman): But typically that’s going to come out of your discovery questions, learning about them. And while we may not be asking discovery questions, we can certainly learn what a discovery question would lead us to based on their profile, on their website, understanding them so that our conversation is around what they care about, not what we want them to know.

0:11:50 – (Bob Woods): Exactly. Exactly. So I think with that because that was so brilliantly put and that’s. And that is a Brynne Tillman original copyright trademark, we’re just going to go on to number four, which is kind of adjacent to it. Detach from what the prospect is worth to you and attach to what you are worth to the prospect, which is. Which is definitely a mind-shift change there. And Stan, do you want to talk to that a little bit?

0:12:24 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yeah, I’ll start because this is another great mindset tip from Brynn. They’re all credit. We can all take credit. Well, you only have to tell me that once.

0:12:38 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, so.

0:12:40 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): So one thing that, that hangs people up a lot of times is commission breath and thinking about, okay, what is this sale going to be worth to me as opposed to thinking about what’s the solution that I have to offer going to be worth to them in terms of solving something for them. So if you keep your mind on the prospect, which is what we’ve been thinking about, keep your mind on the person that you’re interacting with and think of them as a person rather than. I know we say prospect all the time just to give you some frame of reference, but think of them as a person and how you can help them and I’ll, I’ll end with that.

0:13:29 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s awesome, Bob. You go and I’ll close it out.

0:13:33 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So you know, it’s basically. Yeah, to me it’s, it’s almost like, you know how sometimes salespeople are, are like, you know, they have a little bit of self-doubt or they don’t believe in what they’re doing. So, I’m just adding to what Stan said here. So detaching from what the prospect is worth to you and what you are worth to the prospect, you are worth something because you are the expert in whatever it is that you are doing.

0:14:09 – (Bob Woods): This means that the prospect is hopefully coming to you because they have a problem and they’re hoping that you can solve it for them. At that point point, you are worth something to the prospect. Now don’t let this, you know, blow up your mind and you get egotistical and everything else about it. You should definitely be in a serving type of way when you’re doing this, but when you do this it just kind of changes your attitude about yourself. And if you’re going into it with a serving servitude, I forget what the word is there.

0:14:46 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Servant.

0:14:47 – (Bob Woods): Servant. Thank you. I knew I was close. So when you go in with that servant mentality, you know, you are really there to help, which is actually going to get into the next one a little bit more.

0:14:59 – (Brynne Tillman): But I want to, I’ll round this out with detached from what the prospect is worth to you and attach to what you are worth to the prospect is about you caring about solving their problem, their challenges and helping them succeed. Not thinking about the sale. When you show up as that resource, when you show up in a way that you truly care about learning their challenges, learning what’s going on in their situation and you bridge either your solutions to help them solve that, or maybe you are not the right solution, but you can connect them to the right solution.

0:15:46 – (Brynne Tillman): You have now taken into consideration that that prospect is more important than your commission. So when you really have this mindset, you won’t connect and pitch, you will slow down your outreach. Right? All of these things, you’ll treat them like a human being, not a lead. All of the things that we’ve talked about come back to this concept, which is we just have to attach to the value we can bring to them. The sale will come when the time is right.

0:16:23 – (Bob Woods): Absolutely, absolutely. So number five definitely flows out of number four. And this is a phrase that I heard a long time ago. I wish I knew who said it because I would give them credit, but.

0:16:38 – (Brynne Tillman): I’ve been giving you credit for years.

0:16:40 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yeah, yeah, same. Same here.

0:16:44 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, it’s fine. We’ve used it enough. If someone watches this and you are the originator of this next phrase, let us know. We’ll give you credit. But until then.

0:16:57 – (Bob Woods): Absolutely.

0:16:58 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, go for it.

0:17:00 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So here it is. Here it is. Stop telling people how you can help them and simply help them. I mean, we have seen so many people who feel like that they’re up on stage and they’re pontificating about how their stuff does things and how it can help. And, you know, whether it’s in a live venue kind of like this, or whether it’s in posts on LinkedIn or whatever, you see this all the time. What you don’t see is people who are just simply helping other people because of the things that they know, because of the products and services that they have just help people.

0:17:42 – (Bob Woods): I don’t know how much more simply to put it, because when you do help people, you are not only proving that you are the expert in whatever industry that you’re in, but that you also, again, have that servant mentality. You are there to truly help people with their problems. It’s really simple, folks. When you’re up there and you’re like, well, we can help you because we do X, Y, Z, and W. And everybody’s just like, wait, yeah, but what does that do for me?

0:18:13 – (Bob Woods): You need to take it to the. Yeah, what does it do for you, for them? Because you need to help them.

0:18:20 – (Brynne Tillman): I mean, I’m happy to jump in this and then hand it back over to Stan, but what I get from this, which, and I will often say, rather than telling people how you can help them, simply help them, is sort of how I’ve adopted this. But it’s, you know, even in our. And I’m probably jumping ahead with this, but even in our profiles, in our content, when we. In our messaging, when we talk about it, we help people just like you.

0:18:50 – (Brynne Tillman): When we talk about, we’ve helped 27 of your competitors do X, Y, and Z. When we talk about. And we start there. Case studies are important, but not at the top of the funnel. So when we are telling them very early on that this is how we can help you before we’ve helped them. They don’t believe us because everybody is saying all these things. We can help you ten times your. And I’m just going to share as we build out our marketing.

0:19:28 – (Brynne Tillman): Right. And you know, we’ve had professionals say, this is the verbiage that works. 10 times your sales. The three of us really sat down and said, what’s realistic? Not 10 times your sales. If you have zero sales, you’re going to end up with zero sales. Because that’s the way the math works. Right? So we really. It’s about being authentic. But also, before you tell people what you’re going to do for them, they need to experience a little of, you know, your insights.

0:20:04 – (Brynne Tillman): We do this through ebooks, through our podcasts, through our live streams. We do this through our blog posts, through once a month, we have open coaching to the whole world where we bring them unlimited. Well, within an hour. Unlimited support. Right. And why? Because we want them to experience the help. When you help someone and they find it valuable, they’re likely to eventually want to buy from you.

0:20:35 – (Brynne Tillman): And if they’re not, they’re likely to recommend you to someone else that might. So this is really, you know, these all kind of blend together, but this is really also detaching from what the prospect is worth to you and attaching to what you’re worth to the prospect. Stop telling them how they can buy from you and help them solve their problems, and they’ll want to buy from you. All right, Stan, you can round that one out.

0:21:05 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): That your last sentence rounded it out. Yeah. Because a lot of us who are in the training and coaching industry, our intellectual property is what we know and it’s what we sell. And sometimes people are reluctant to give for free what they can get paid for in terms of their knowledge. And what we’re saying is you need to be willing to give a lot of that away for free. You will get paid for it. If you can give away everything you know in an hour, you need to learn some more.

0:21:46 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, that was a mic drop. I love that.

0:21:51 – (Bob Woods): That’s great. That is good.

0:21:53 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, it’s the same thing as what we do here. Actually. I’ve had our. I’ve had colleagues or competitors, although I don’t look at anyone really as a competitor, I’ve had colleagues literally reach out to me and say, please shut down your YouTube channel because you give away more value than we sell. And I’m like, well, that. To Stan’s point, then you need to start figuring out how to give more value.

0:22:20 – (Brynne Tillman): Right? Like, find it. And you know, very few people can learn everything from your YouTube channel in 20-minute increments. Right. And ultimately, unless you are selling only the training or the insights and you’re not selling the guidance or the coaching, they’re never, rarely are they going to be able to do it on their own anyway. So you know, they’ll go, oh, I love that, I want more of that. And that’s your goal, to get them to say, I want more of that?

0:23:02 – (Bob Woods): Yep. All right, that’s perfect. That is absolutely perfect. So the next one again kind of descends from a bunch of stuff that we’ve been talking about so far. Rather than sharing the content that you want to share, share the content that they want to consume. So in other words, not stuff that you think is helpful or just the content that you want to talk about, Share the content that’s going to help them with their problems, with what they’re facing, with how it can help them, but at the same time actually help them through the content that you are sharing.

0:23:43 – (Bob Woods): I think that was pretty simple, Stan. Do you want to run with the bottom after that handoff?

0:23:50 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Only that we’ve talked about putting on the hat of the person that you want to help. And so you just need to see things through their eyes. Most times the content that we want to share is promotional, self-serving or it may not be relevant to the audience that we want to help. So just think and look through the eyes of your audience and that will guide the content that you share with them.

0:24:24 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love this. We have a client, now it’s probably two years now, maybe even longer. But the financial advisor who started working with us and just started and then said, I’m going to share a ton of content. And so he started sharing content and came back to a coaching session and said, I’m getting all kinds of engagement. I’m like, that’s awesome. Let’s take a look. Because we want to engage back.

0:24:49 – (Brynne Tillman): And they were all financial advisors and I said, so this is a great, great start. But you’re sharing content you care about and we know this because you’re engaging other people like you. You have to start thinking about what your prospect care about, what is it they’re engaging on. And this will take some social listening. What are they sharing? What industry are they in? What industry do they sell into?

0:25:18 – (Brynne Tillman): And it doesn’t always have to be about your product and service. It could be something that’s Just parallel something that starts the conversation that will lead back. So that’s my thought.

0:25:33 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, 100%. 100%. So let’s go ahead. And we’re going to be getting out of that realm just a little bit and into something a little bit different that if you haven’t thought about this, you’re going to go, my God, this, this one’s really simple. Why have I not thought about this? Never ask a question that you could have learned from their LinkedIn profile. So people have LinkedIn profiles, and they put all kinds of content in there about themselves.

0:26:03 – (Bob Woods): Most of the time they do. Sometimes they’re a little lacking, we understand that. But most of the time you will see things like, you know, current job, previous jobs, where they’re located, you know, the real basics type of stuff. So when you are on that or when you’re planning rather for that discovery, call insights, call whatever you want to say, whatever that first contact is, even if it’s a networking meeting or something like that, look at their LinkedIn profile, glean some information from that about them before you even speak to them. Because this does two things.

0:26:41 – (Bob Woods): One, it shows that you care enough about them to actually learn this stuff. And number two, they’re, they’re going to go, you know, wow, this is, this is good stuff. How did you learn about this stuff? And you’ll just say, hey, I just looked at your LinkedIn profile because all of it was already there. I mean it’s, it’s, it’s something that’s really simple but yet a lot of people just don’t think about doing it.

0:27:07 – (Bob Woods): But when you do it, your credibility is going to go way up in their minds because you, you took that little bit of time to do that. And guess what, it doesn’t take a lot of time to do either. You just need to integrate it into your pre-call planning or pre-call, whatever planning process that you have.

0:27:24 – (Brynne Tillman): Stan, do you want to go next?

0:27:27 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Just real quick, this is one of these things where if you do this, if you ask a question that was already answered on their LinkedIn profile, it wastes time in a discussion. And if you’re talking to a prospective client, you want to make the best possible use of the limited time that you have and it clearly shows them that you haven’t done your research, both of which are negative. So I’ll end with that.

0:27:56 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love that. I’m going to piggyback on that and say, never ask a question that you could have learned from their LinkedIn profile because I don’t know if that’s a because. But here’s the thing, number one, don’t ask. Here are things. Let me say it this way. Here are things you should never ask because you could have learned it from their profile. Number one, where are you calling from? Instead say, oh, I see you’re in Lexington, Kentucky, Bob. I’ve never been there, but I hear there are some great horse races, right? Oh, right, yeah. Well, we go to the derby every year. In fact, my wife has really fun hats.

0:28:41 – (Brynne Tillman): Right, whatever. Right. I’ve now created a rapport-building opportunity. So not only is it a negative, but you’re also losing all of the warming up that you could do. One of the things I love is to look at when I connected with this person so I can look in contact information and I can see the date we connected. So I could say maybe I’ve re-engaged. And I could say, hey Stan, I’m not sure if you realize this, but we’ve been connected since 2015.

0:29:18 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, we really haven’t had a conversation yet. Then look, oh my God, like you remember that, that’s amazing, or whatever that might be. So. Or I could say, hey Stan, I see that we’re, you know, both followers of Bob Woods and his content. Did you see the post he put out last week? It was so good. It was on X, Y, and Z. I’m happy to share that with you all of a sudden like they, that you’ve made them matter.

0:29:46 – (Brynne Tillman): So that’s where I’m going to leave that one.

0:29:51 – (Bob Woods): All right, next up next. Yeah, so next, do not use automation on LinkedIn ever, ever, ever. A couple of reasons for this. Number one, if you’re watching us live right now, you can see it breaks LinkedIn’s user agreement and it’s specifically 8.2.2 in their user agreement that basically says don’t use automation. And so you’re probably like, well, you know, whatever, I’ll use automation. Wrong. LinkedIn is cracking down more and more and more on people using automation. They will suspend your account, they will shut down your account.

0:30:39 – (Bob Woods): You know, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s their sandbox. You may disagree with what they’re saying but guess what, they own the sandbox, therefore they get to dictate the rules. And they do not want you using a third party, specifically third-party automation tools for, mainly for messaging and for reaching out and things like that. The other thing that it does is it really takes away authenticity because automation is usually a sequence you normally have to determine what you’re going to say in each message ahead of time, for some reason someone replies back, replies back something different, but there’s something else in the automation sequence that automatically sends something out, depending on, you know, that sends something out, no matter what was sent into them, you’re immediately going to lose that person because they’re going to, if they haven’t guessed already that it’s automation, they’re definitely going to guess it at that point.

0:31:37 – (Bob Woods): So, you know, two huge reasons not to use it. The overriding one, even disregarding everything else I said about the actual messaging, is that it’s against user agreements or LinkedIn’s user agreement rather, and they’re shutting people down because of it.

0:31:55 – (Brynne Tillman): So I’m going to just Clarify. These are third-party automation tools. LinkedIn itself is actually starting to bring AI into its platform. So if it’s on the LinkedIn platform, and we don’t even know what that completely looks like yet, but I know on Sales Navigator there’s lots of research that you can do and you can put in. There’s a new. I don’t want to speak too soon, but in the next couple of days, there’s a new feature coming out where they’re using automated research that will help you in your prospecting.

0:32:38 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s all. Okay. What Bob is talking about is the third-party Chrome extension.

0:32:44 – (Bob Woods): Yeah.

0:32:44 – (Brynne Tillman): That products that are scraping content off of LinkedIn and that it’s the scraping the content that really breaks that agreement. So great. Awesome. Oh, I have to look. I’m not ready for the next one, so. Yeah, I don’t know. Stan, do you have anything you want to say on that topic before we move on?

0:33:07 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Nope. You all summed it up.

0:33:10 – (Bob Woods): Okay, number nine, we’re almost home, folks, and we’re a little long, so we’re going to wrap this up pretty quick here. Make sure your voice on social matches your voice in person. So, Brynne, you want to take that one because this one’s really big. Because there could be such a huge disconnect between what people sound like on LinkedIn versus a normal conversation. Just like what we’re having right now.

0:33:37 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So you know, when we use AI, it can use words and phrases that are clearly AI, like delve or fostering. Like those are words that they’re using all the time. And while I used to use the word fostering, I no longer do because it actually sounds like AI. So that’s the first piece. The second piece is that when you are asking AI to comment when you’re Asking AI to write a post. If you don’t have the opportunity to add your thoughts to that prompt, it’s not your thought, it’s not in your voice.

0:34:25 – (Brynne Tillman): Anytime you are using AI and Shameless Plug, we’re launching Ask SSL AI shortly, so reach out if you want to be on that waiting list. Most of what we do is make sure that before we complete a prompt, we’re asking you your perspective, your thoughts, how you would access or how you would perform, or how you would integrate so that when that comment or that post or that poll is given to you, it’s in your voice.

0:35:12 – (Brynne Tillman): It is critical. Oh, so critical is a word that AI uses. So maybe I’ll say it is vital you get critical times. It is vital that you don’t post something that doesn’t sound like you in person. Right. If you would not say it on a call, don’t say it on LinkedIn or in your messaging.

0:35:37 – (Bob Woods): And speaking of saying, the easiest way to do that is to read it out loud. Read the content out loud. When you read it out loud, if you’re like, boy, this doesn’t sound like me, then rewrite it so that it does sound like you. It’s one of the easiest things to do yet. It’s really, really effective. And you know, keeping in mind, you know, as Brynne said, there are some words that you quite frankly may use, but that AI uses as well. So definitely keep track of those so that you’re not using that in.

0:36:10 – (Bob Woods): In your copy and maybe even try to train yourself out of it in yours. In your own little brain-like mind. Tidy br that’s always trying to train myself out of those things as well. Stan, do you have anything to add to that real quick?

0:36:26 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Just quickly that this is a problem that existed pre-AI. If someone else was writing your content or if you were trying to copy someone else, maybe you didn’t think you were a good writer. So we just come back to whatever you do, review the content, make sure, read it out loud, and make sure that it sounds like you.

0:36:50 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love that. Now, I think that that is amazing to think about because I really didn’t. But when we hired ghostwriters, if they didn’t interview you and they just went out and researched and wrote content. Yeah, that was just as broken as this. You guys always get me thinking. You do.

0:37:11 – (Bob Woods): An excellent point. So our last one and then we’re gonna bring it home real quick and we’re gonna do this one real quick to respect the inbox. So your offer of Content, when you are offering content should be permission-based. So in other words, don’t offer content and the link to it specifically proactively. In other words, you should ask first if they are interested in receiving that content. If they say if they message you back and say yes, then you have permission to send that to them.

0:37:50 – (Bob Woods): And we learned that very specifically. We had someone who we and I don’t remember who, but who essentially told us, to make a long story short, that it feels spammy if you send the link along with the offer to really space it out and give it just a little bit of extra room so that it doesn’t feel spammy because you don’t want to look like that you’re being spammy when you’re really not. You just want to share information, but yet there are times when even though you have the right thing in your heart that you want to do the presentation of it may not be absolutely perfect.

0:38:31 – (Bob Woods): This is a way to get around all of that and also show that you care enough to not just proactively offer something and that you’re gauging their interest in something before you send the link.

0:38:43 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Stan yeah, that’s so well said. The main thing is respecting their inbox and the fact that most of us have inboxes that are overflowing and we’re not talking about necessarily promotional content here. We’re talking even if this is content you feel or you’re pretty sure will be of value to them, it may not have anything to do with your solution. You think this will help them still ask their permission because it, respects their inbox, it lets them choose and it increases the likelihood that they’ll actually read it.

0:39:21 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I’m going to just close this out. I love everything you said, but respect the inbox. Your offer of content should be permission-based and we did the research to prove it. So we did have, and I believe it was Larry Levine who mentioned sending content without permission felt spammy. I will have to double-check on that. But we tested it. What we did is used Smart Links, which is a feature in Sales Navigator, we went to 100 first-degree connections and said, hey, we came across this curated piece of content from Jeb Blunt and I thought you’d find it valuable.

0:40:11 – (Brynne Tillman): Here’s the link. And because it was in a smart link, we could see who clicked through and we could see how many times it was clicked through and we got 19. So that was pretty good. And we were like, oh, I don’t think this is a bad thing at all. And then we did 100 messages, permission-based. Hey, came across this content, and thought you might be interested. Here were some of our takeaways or here were some of my takeaways.

0:40:45 – (Brynne Tillman): If you’re interested, let me know. I’m happy to send you a link. 69 people responded, yes, please send it. And 58 clicked through. So not only is respecting their inbox the right thing to do, but it’s also more productive. And yes, this is where slowing down your outreach to speed up your outcome comes in. Right. Why did that happen? I believe, and we don’t have any proof of what I’m about to say, but I believe there’s FOMO fear of missing out.

0:41:23 – (Brynne Tillman): If I don’t ask you for it, I’ll never get it. If I already sent it, I don’t need to click through it. If I’m interested, I can come back to it later, number one. Number two, they go, oh wow, they thought of me. And it’s a piece of valuable content that they’re offering, but they’re not spamming me with it. I’m much more open. The bottom line is the number three is it starts a conversation, even if it’s a one-word back.

0:41:56 – (Brynne Tillman): Would you like this? Yes, we now have a. And then I send it. We now have a conversation and engagement. And I really believe that, at the core of all of this, if we are not starting conversations, then we are not social selling. We’re just out there engaging. So that’s, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

0:42:26 – (Bob Woods): So. So we all need to stick to these things. By following these 10 commandments, you’ll always remember that LinkedIn and social selling are all about building relationships and bringing value, keeping your audience of prospects and your customers and even your networking partners and everyone always has them at the top of mind. So with that, thank you for joining us for this episode of Making Sales Social Live.

0:42:54 – (Bob Woods): If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, or our other social networks, we do this every week. So keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast, which means it’s recorded, supported and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button to access our all of our previous shows and be alerted when new ones drop. Socialsaleslink.com

0:43:14 – (Bob Woods): podcast is where you’re going to want to go for previous episodes and just find out more information about us. In general, we do two shows weekly, this one and our Making Sales Social interview series where we talk with leaders in experts in sales, marketing, business, and many more areas. So when you are out and about, be sure that you are making your sales social Social.

0:43:42 – (Brynne Tillman): Bye guys.

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