Episode 383: Using Humor and Personality to Transform Sales Strategies

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 teach 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.

0:00:16 – (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, tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show. Will Aitken joins me today in the Social Sales Link studios here on Making Sales Social.

0:00:48 – (Bob Woods): Will is a sales trainer, content creator, and agency owner who’s worked with hundreds of sales and marketing teams to fix their broken stuff and who doesn’t like a fix, fix-it person hanging around and stuff like that. Will also does content creation, and his love for content creation led him to his current career in marketing, keynotes, book writing and sales training. He’s known for his humor. Thank God we love humorous people here, as well as candor and an unmatched ability to make sales. Engaging in that vein, Will has taken his expertise from SaaS sales to viral content creation, among many, many other things.

0:01:27 – (Bob Woods): So with that, let’s get a little fun. I don’t, I don’t know if that’s the right way to put it, but yeah, I know. W w moment with Will Ain. Welcome to Making Sales Social. Will.

0:01:38 – (Will Aitken): Bob. What an intro! And I won’t lie, whenever I say we’re going to make something funny, the pressure is on to try and get a giggle or two. You know, I mean, it makes it so much tougher when you say let’s make things funny.

0:01:50 – (Bob Woods): Let’s make things funny. We usually make things funny here on Making Sales Social. So, I mean, you know, you know, that’s fine. It’s always light and breezy. So especially with our first question. Maybe, maybe not. We’ll see. So our first traditional question is always: What does Making Sales Social mean to you?

0:02:10 – (Will Aitken): H. Good question, I would say. I mean, there’s this idea of social selling, right? And that’s kind of where my head goes to straight away, which is in some people’s opinion, just selling on social media with DMS and etc. But to me, I would say it’s more like building a brand and socializing yourself through content, networking, commenting, engaging with people, and meeting them online. That means that when a problem that you can help solve comes up, you’re the first person they think of.

0:02:41 – (Will Aitken): So it’s, it’s having a social conversation with no attachment to sales until it actually requires it to. So I would say just building a name for yourself, putting it out there, socializing it, and that way being one of the first people people turn to when they feel like you can help them.

0:02:57 – (Bob Woods): Sounds like you’ve taken some of our training because that’s essentially what we say. And that, of course, because you sound like us, is the perfect answer. So with that, so in researching looked up your LinkedIn profile. The first statement in your headline, trust me, I’m a salesperson, which I think is just absolutely brilliant, especially because, you know, people have all kinds of thoughts about salespeople and, and, and everything. El would like to know the motivation behind you having that, and, and, and, quite frankly, because of what LinkedIn headlines do.

0:03:35 – (Bob Woods): I used to call it your LinkedIn Stalker because it follows you everywhere on LinkedIn and, and, and so whenever people see your name and your photograph, they see the first several words in your headline. So everybody out there, whenever they have, have, have any kind of visual contact with anything that you do on LinkedIn is saying, Trust me, I’m a salesperson. Why, why have that in your headline?

0:04:03 – (Will Aitken): Yeah, I wish I give you a really thoughtful answer, but the reality is I put it there because I thought it was funny and then I kept it because I kept getting compliments on it. I think, I think it does call us something that’s pretty important to a lot of the things I talk about, which is that salespeople, you know, their irony in that headline is that most people don’t trust salespeople.

0:04:23 – (Will Aitken): And I think that’s something I tend to address when I’m working sales teams, and in my content and in the way I do things myself is that if you build trust, then you actually, you can, you can flip that idea on its head. That’s the preconceived notion that when you do things the right way, you don’t have that issue of mistrust, etc. When you’re talking to a prospect or you can reduce that mistrust. So yeah, that’s like I did, and you know, I stuck with it, and then I made a hat with it on and sold some of those in a merch stor,e and they sell pretty well. I think people, people get the joke, but I think calls out something that’s super important that most people do not trust salespeople.

0:05:03 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, I know it’s, I mean, one of the one of the very first things we do when we talk to people, especially about LinkedIn headlines, and I wasn’t planning on going down this road, but it’s, but it’s interesting is, is that, you know, we tell people to essentially show their value in their headline, and we also tell people to specifically not say that they’re salespeople because in their headline because, because that’s repellent, we think. And, and, and it sounds like you would agree with that statement.

0:05:31 – (Will Aitken): I tell people the same thing. You know, the worst thing you put in your title is Account Executive App Blank or S Sales Development rep. Because most people are repelled by salespeople, but I work with salespeople, and most salespeople, that’s, that’s who I’m trying to connect with. So, although I’m certain that some people have probably denied a connection request for me because they’ve seen, trust me, I’m a salesperson, they’re probably not the right people for me anyway because they didn’t get the joke.

0:05:56 – (Will Aitken): But I feel like you attract what you put out, and the people who see that and see the humor in that and see the truth in that are actually going to be the best people I could be connected with, the best people to follow me. So in that sense, I don’t recommend anyone else do that. It’s a unique case for me because I do a lot of work with sales teams and I’ve made that my anchor of all the content I create.

0:06:21 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. But people, I think, do kind of have to find that, that kind of general sense of statement about themselves at the same time. Wouldn’t you agree with that? And I guess, how would somebody possibly go about determining what that statement is? What do you think about that?

0:06:40 – (Will Aitken): Yeah. So when I, when I, when I talk to people about this and they go, what should I make my headline if it’s not just my job title? I tend to say, well, what’s your unique 

0:06:52 – (Will Aitken): So, like, what’s not just your companies if you’re a sales rep, but what’s your unique take on that? And the more personality you could pump into that thing, the more different you’re going to seem.

0:07:03 – (Will Aitken): So the basic version of this is, you know, let’s say I’m selling some kind of presentation software to teachers. Um, I could say, you know, presentations are putting people to sleep, let’s chat, or making presentations engaging again or something. Science that effect.

0:07:23 – (Will Aitken): So I’m more talking about the value of the problem.

0:07:25 – (Will Aitken): But the more unique of a perspective you can share about that problem in your headline, I think the more profound it is, the more you stand out, but also the less you put up people’s resistance. Because it doesn’t just scream salesperson, it screams person with an opinion, and a credible one at that, and potentially even appear if it’s, if it’s something that people can really relate to. Yeah.

0:07:43 – (Bob Woods): Because people connect with people. They don’t connect with brands. I mean, that’s. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, and, and also, I think with everything that Will just said, you don’t have to be humorous about it either. So, I mean, we are talking about humor. And you know, I mean, and both Will and I know, I know Will’s funny. I hope I’m funny, but, you know, you don’t have to have humor involved there. But that, that being said, though, you do use humor in your content.

0:08:13 – (Bob Woods): So what role does it play? And, and especially for, for people like me who, who want to provide value in their content, things like that. And I tend to use humor as, as, as well. So how do you balance entertainment with providing actionable value for your audience?

0:08:33 – (Will Aitken): Yeah, so this is something I’ve been very intentional about when it comes to my audience because I didn’t want to just be a class clown.

0:08:40 – (Will Aitken): And just do humor.

0:08:42 – (Will Aitken): I mean, there’s definitely case studies of people who have done that and been successful with tons of comedians. You know, one in our space that makes me think of is like Ross, Corporate Bro. He, he, he doesn’t. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sales tip come out of Corporate Bro. But his entertainment is amazing. The reality is I still felt like I had things to say beyond just the humor. But I think humor plays a great part because it’s, it’s relatable.

0:09:07 – (Will Aitken): Normally you’re poking fun at the problem or the situation, and if you can actually help with that, then you’re bringing awareness to yourself with the way you help with that as well.

0:09:16 – (Will Aitken): So if I’m making, if I make a joke about how the fact that, you know, most emails get replies like unsubscribe or go straight to the spam, if I actually have a service that helps with that, it draws attention to the fact that I can relate to people and it helps build a relationship with those people. And again, if they know that I can help that issue when that issue is more prominent or if it is an issue right now, I will again be someone they turn to. Even though what got their attention in the first place was me just making fun of it.

0:09:45 – (Will Aitken): Right. If I still follow up with some kind of credibility and expertise or tip or takeaway, then I bring attention to the problem. But then I also position myself as someone who can help with that. So it kind of creates a funnel. I tried not to do too much humor or too much education because I feel like there’s a lot of doing. Humor is something that really differentiates up because a lot of people do struggle to be funny and relatable.

0:10:20 – (Will Aitken): Yeah. However, if I do too much of that, then I become a cast count. Like I said, I lose credibility if I do too much of that. But then, if I just did education, then there are a lot of people out there giving very similar tips. Sales have been around for a long time. A lot of the methodologies and things that have been spoken about have been spoken about before, just in different ways.

0:10:41 – (Will Aitken): Yeah. I feel like there’s a lot of people do it, saying those things out there, and if I didn’t have a humorous take on it, it would be harder to differentiate myself in the way I talk about those things than just the other thousand, ten thousand sales training organizations and, and folks out there.

0:10:59 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So who inspired your comedic style and then how did you kind of channel that into more of a business content? I mean, because you could just toss out a question, you know, who inspired your comic, your. Your comedic style? You’d say Steve Martin or something like that. I don’t know. He was just the first person who popped. Popped into my head. But then it’s like, okay, now channel Steve Martin into business.

0:11:24 – (Will Aitken): Yeah. I would say who inspired my community style? I, I’m not sure. It’s, it’s, it’s. It’s kind of always been a key element of my personality. Okay. My dad is a very funny fellow. He likes to take the piss, as we like to say in the UK a lot. So I’ve always followed in his footsteps that in that way. I think a lot of the content pieces that I’ve found myself are probably quite inspired by things that I’ve seen other creators talk about and the way they’ve made funny things for their specific world.

0:11:56 – (Will Aitken): So.

0:11:56 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:11:57 – (Will Aitken): There’s a lot of inspiration just from consuming a lot of humorous content, but I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where I’ve got most of it from. It’s just that I consume a lot of content, and I was like, oh, you know, there’s there’s this space of where people are making these relatable jokes and, and videos and, and, and quips, but there’s not really that many people doing it in business. So then I had ideas and thought about making them and then actually made them and then they did well. So I made more.

0:12:27 – (Will Aitken): But I would say I couldn’t pinpoint one great inspiration of them. Probably my dad, who. Yeah, sure, like a clone of myself, but older and bolder.

0:12:36 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. I mean, and, and I mean to, to actually say, you know, one person influenced my style is like, okay, so, so you’re like Steve Martin but you’re in sales basically. And I think that if someone was impersonating someone who is Steve Martin but is also in, in sales essentially. So I mean, you know, it could be, you know, you know, kind of an amalgamation of people or you know, a show or something like who I liked.

0:13:02 – (Will Aitken): Yeah. I think like there’s a guy called Michael McIntyre who’s a British comedian. He’s not super well known, and I don’t think the States. Kean Peel. Yes, they, that, that skit humor is legendary. Some early SNL stuff. I guess I’m just trying to think of where I found inspiration. A lot of movies, a lot of YouTube creators as well. Okay.

0:13:23 – (Bob Woods): Yeah.

0:13:24 – (Will Aitken): And I suppose a lot of TikTok creators as well. Especially when I first got into things. That’s where I started with short-form video on TikTok, and that’s where it really blew up. And moving that across to LinkedIn was probably the big step that made it more of a business opportunity for me doing that type of thing. There’s, like probably a curator I can think of. Evan Williams is really good.

0:13:44 – (Will Aitken): He’s got a few hundred thousand followers. He does like these, these sketch comedy things, but more mainly about like mainstream movies and things like that. So he’s someone who I think has inspired me.

0:13:55 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So the whole TikTok, the LinkedIn thing I think, is really interesting too because you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, your, your unconventional career path. That’s kind of an unconventional path in terms of, you know, how we do social selling. I mean, because we always do LinkedIn primarily. And then, if your audience exists on Instagram, do it there. If your audience also exists on TikTok, do it there as well. But you know, the migration from TikTok to LinkedIn, I think, is really interesting.

0:14:29 – (Bob Woods): Why don’t you go into that a little bit? I mean were, you were, you actually were. What was TikTok mainly for? For. And, and, and I hate to put it in a pedestrian type way, but I can’t think of any other way to put it right now. What was it just, was it just for, for views and just to build your brand and now you’re doing more business over on LinkedIn or were you actually doing business, business over on, over on TikTok as well?

0:15:01 – (Will Aitken): It’s a good question, and I don’t think the answer is either of those things because the reason I started creating content first place was really just because I enjoyed doing it. So I’ve always wanted to do YouTube and things like that. And you know, I came up a generation where it’s like I could have, you know, if a lot of people kick themselves, like I could have made a YouTube channel back when it was blowing up and being these huge folks who make lots of money on that.

0:15:24 – (Will Aitken): But I was in sales, and I just moved to a new city, I didn’t know anyone and I started creating videos as a hobby and as a way to almost talk about my learnings in sales, talk about the relatable things that happen in sales. TikTok has definitely driven some business for me. At the very minimum, it’s driven some brand awareness for me because people come up to me in Toronto and Denver and even the streets of New York and say, hey, you’re that sales TikTok guy, right?

0:15:51 – (Will Aitken): Could I attribute as much business to TikTok as I have from LinkedIn? Certainly not. LinkedIn is obviously a much richer audience for sales leaders, etc, but it’s, it was a vessel for me to start creating content where I didn’t know anyone and didn’t feel judgment. And it was an easy place for me to create video content because they’ve got quite intuitive editing tools built into the app there. So that was, that was ultimately what made it TikTok. And then it was easy enough to cross post anything I made on TikTok onto LinkedIn.

0:16:18 – (Bob Woods): Right.

0:16:19 – (Will Aitken): Although you see a lot these days, a lot of video on LinkedIn. In 2021, there wasn’t really anyone doing as much video, especially not short-form portrait video, which is like the thing everyone’s trying to do right now. So yeah, it was ultimately a way that separated me from a lot of the other stuff that was on LinkedIn at the time as well.

0:16:36 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah. And LinkedIn is definitely prioritizing short short form video, short form vertical video specs in its algorithm and now even over on mobile they have the TikTok scrolling experience. Not, not everyone still has that yet, but they’re still rolling that out. But, but if you have that and, and, and you start a video, you’ll notice that you’ll be able to scroll to other videos. Just like on TikTok.

0:17:00 – (Will Aitken): Exactly. And I mean, funny enough, since they’ve started doing that, I’ve been doing fewer videos and my text posts are getting more impressions now.

0:17:08 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. Yeah, I guess it’s like you don’t.

0:17:10 – (Will Aitken): Want to do what everyone else is doing sometimes as well.

0:17:12 – (Bob Woods): Right? I would, I would definitely agree with that. I definitely agree with that. So let’s get into the other phrase of yours that I like a lot, and that is someone who fixes broken stuff for sales and marketing teams. So what breaks? What are some of the common mistakes and, and, and what are some of the common mistakes that you see that you’re out there, you know, with your wrench or your spanner, if you’re from, and trying to fix, basically.

0:17:47 – (Will Aitken): With my spanner? Yeah. The most common one across all levels of the funnel from marketing sales outbound in the cycle is the product. Everyone’s so focused on their thing, and that’s trying to sell their thing. But the reality is they don’t ever talk about the problem, whether that’s in their content on the marketing side, whether it’s in the outbound. They don’t address the, hey, this is the issue that you might be having that we could help solve, that comes first.

0:18:17 – (Will Aitken): So generally, that is the most common and I still don’t know how it comes up so often because people talk about this a lot, and they’ve been talking about it for a long, long time. Spin Sandler Gap selling. Everyone says focus the, on the problem, but yet you you think that people are doing this. And then I get into a sales team and everyone’s emails look the same. Cliches, buzzwords, innovative solutions that can help you 10x your.

0:18:40 – (Will Aitken): Whatever it may be, whoever they’re selling to, and it still continues to be a problem. So I would say that pitching is the biggest problem. I often tend to fix people just trying to sell instead of trying to understand or highlight a problem that they can help with before trying to sell their software service.

0:19:03 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah. I mean, we see that all the time as well in the people who we coach and who we train. And we are, we are very, we are so anti-pitch. You know, we call, you know, connect and pitch on, on LinkedIn or pitch slapping what’s you know, which is you know, you actually write a pitch in your connection request and you know, it’s just, I, I think and, and, and this is just from my observation and tell me if you agree or not.

0:19:32 – (Bob Woods): I think that even though people, people I think deep down inside know that they should be addressing problems, but I think that, that, that that lizard side of the brain comes up a little bit and it’s like, no, you just gotta pitch. You’ve got to close this person down as soon as possible. Pushes away what people should be doing because almost that fear mechanism clicks in and they just want to close no matter what.

0:19:58 – (Bob Woods): And, and how do you do that? You just pitch.

0:20:04 – (Will Aitken): I think it’s, it’s almost counterintuitive to people for what they think sales should be and what, what sale effective sales actually is. It feels, and especially for folks who are new to the role or have had leaders who haven’t shown them the light in this regard, it feels counterintuitive to not talk about your product because you feel like that’s your job selling sales. You’re selling a product.

0:20:27 – (Will Aitken): But the reality is if there is no problem, there is no need for your product. So why would you start before you know there is a need?

0:20:36 – (Will Aitken): Yeah, I feel like that’s, that’s the big challenge there. It’s, it goes against intuition and goes against people’s preconceived ideas of what sales should be, and they don’t get shown otherwise. And I did this for a long time as well, like that. That’s part of why this makes me so passionate. For years, I had mediocre sales results. Some big moms, some small ones, and I basically just numbered my way through it, but put my thing in front of enough people, enough people would say yes, that I would just about keep my job.

0:21:04 – (Will Aitken): But the reality is, until I, when I actually started going some training, it actually became very predictable and a much more rewarding career because then I was talking about these, these things that people were currently doing and what was going wrong with them. Completely absent from the conversation about my product. And then I was actually finding I was actually helping people with whatever I proposed or solution I put forward versus shilling just anything. Right, Right.

0:21:30 – (Will Aitken): It became a lot more rewarding when I, when I had that realization, that light bulb moment as well.

0:21:35 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, I mean it’s like, you know, imagine when, when you’re talking to someone talk about what they want to talk about, not what you want to talk about.

0:21:43 – (Will Aitken): That’s what are they doing. People love talking about themselves, right?

0:21:47 – (Will Aitken): I also find this applies beyond sales as well. It’s like content, right? Yeah. If you’re talking about the problem in your content, you’re building awareness of the problem. But you, like, on my page, you won’t see me pitch myself very often.

0:22:01 – (Will Aitken): It doesn’t mean I don’t get a lot of people coming to me to work with me because I’m bringing awareness to the problem and it’s. I’m also telling people how to fix their problems for free. Yeah. Without.

0:22:12 – (Bob Woods): Oh, yeah, right.

0:22:13 – (Will Aitken): So then that. And then ultimately, if that doesn’t work, then they come. Come directly to me because I’ve already provided some level of value. So. yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:22:24 – (Bob Woods): I mean, that, that, that gets into one of my sayings, which someone else said this once upon a time. I still have no idea who did it. If anyone, please tell me if you if you know who said this originally, because I want to give this person credit because it’s brilliant. Stop talking about how you help people and just help people.

0:22:41 – (Will Aitken): Love that. I don’t know who said it.

0:22:45 – (Bob Woods): I was depending on you, Will. Really?

0:22:47 – (Will Aitken): I’m sorry, I was kind of getting ready for a challenge there so I could be like, yeah, that was so and so. But I don’t have it.

0:22:53 – (Bob Woods): I’m sorry. Exactly. Do you have a quick example of a particularly challenging broken sales strategy that you helped transform for an individual or a company?

0:23:04 – (Will Aitken): Yeah, I’ll think of one that I had last week.

0:23:07 – (Will Aitken): Yeah. So I was doing a workshop with a team, R2G W I. They provide insights, Right. And they compete with other insights providers like Ipsos, Kanta, these kinds of big historic ones, but they’re kind of newer and they focus on online insights.

0:23:26 – (Will Aitken): And they’re easier to use, they deliver faster insights. And a lot of the outbounding to companies was talking about these things. We are easy to use. We’re quick. We provide way deeper and richer, more accurate, more niche online insights.

0:23:39 – (Will Aitken): And I said to them, like, none of these things matter unless someone is, is worse off for not having those insights.

0:23:49 – (Will Aitken): So instead of talking about these things, let’s talk about the absence of what easy to get rich, deep online insights are.

0:23:57 – (Will Aitken): What does that mean? It’s they’ve got generic insights or they’re having to work their ass off to find insights that allow them to make decisions as a business, like focus on that absence of your product and what could be wrong with that or could be wrong with the fact that they’re using something else versus focusing on what makes you different. Because if you focus on that and someone says, yes, I feel like my insights are generic, or yes, I feel like I’m not in a position where we can feel confident in the decisions our business is making because we’re using consumer insights that don’t take into account online consumer behavior.

0:24:29 – (Will Aitken): And we’re getting all our insights from focus groups that take weeks to set up and then don’t even give up a good true reading of our demographic that we’re trying to go after until you get someone to say that that’s the reason why they would actually care about the thing that you offer. So, focus on that first. And if you illuminate that as an issue, then someone saying that I have that issue opens the door for you to say, we might be able to help with that. Let’s chat.

0:24:52 – (Will Aitken): All right, so that was an example of one where there was a few people going, nodding along and oh, wow, okay. Yeah, I get this.

0:25:01 – (Will Aitken): No one cares about easy-to-use, deep insights unless they’re having a hard time getting insights today.

0:25:08 – (Bob Woods): Right? Yeah. Yeah. So it is. Yeah, I think, you put kind of a twist on something, but, but I think that a lot of people can, can relate to it. Imagine the lack of your product being involved. Yes, I think that’s it. Yeah, I mean, that’s your niche.

0:25:23 – (Will Aitken): What is wrong with not having your product? We should be spending a lot of time talking about that, but not in a like, you’re stupid for not buying our thing way. It’s more like, what’s the problem? Like, what’s the challenge? Let’s make that the focus of our message because if people feel that, then that naturally leads to a conversation about how you might be able to help.

0:25:45 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. Dropping major thought bombs during this. I love it. That was great. So let’s talk real quick about AI. So, AI’s here. AI ain’t going away. AI is gonna, you know, change, change so much. So with the rise of AI, and I’ve got automation in this question too. We don’t like automation at social sales Link. If you’ve listened to us in the past, you’ve heard us rail against automation, especially on LinkedIn, because LinkedIn doesn’t like it and will shut you down. So anyhow, with the rise of AI tools, how do you see the role of sales profess in the next five years or, you know, maybe even going away? I mean, because one of the big Conversations right now is SDRs and AI and you know, that’s just, that’s kind of a tough position to be in right now.

0:26:42 – (Will Aitken): Let’s. I’ll preface this, by the way. I. I dislike and hate automation and AI and everything that stands for because it goes against what I believe true good selling is. Now the challenge is sure that a lot of the AI and automation is only getting better and better. And right now I would say AI is probably edging out 75% of sellers, outbound sellers. And that is if AI can do it better than that just shows how bad of a problem there is in the. In there has been in a sales industry.

0:27:13 – (Will Aitken): So it’s almost brought on by ourselves because if the AI message I can see that it can put together the emails, even some the calls, if they beat 3, 3/4 of the sales reps out there, then what does that say about how we’ve enabled and trained those sales reps over the past few years? Pretty badly, honestly. If something generic that feeds off everything on the Internet can, can do that like that. So I think the things that people can do is.

0:27:43 – (Will Aitken): I think about the things AI can’t do as well and double down on all those areas.

0:27:48 – (Will Aitken): So AI sucks at having personality. I think AI can’t have conversations like the ones that you and I are having right now with all the imperfections and opinions and life experience. That’s what makes you, you. So I’d lean to more of that while you’re selling in both outbound. So if you are funny, lean into funny. Like, like, like there’s things you can do there to still have a personal influence on what you put out there. There are also things that you can do, like referrals, content creation, building a brand, making yourself known, and ultimately doing the unexpected, which I think the AI still struggled to do. So although it beats out the three quarters, there’s still a core people who are doing things different enough and good enough and focusing on the right areas where it’s not doing so well.

0:28:32 – (Will Aitken): Maybe it’ll catch up with them, probably frankly the rate this thing’s going could. But I still feel like there’s someone who has to direct these tools. Someone who has to know enough about what it should be doing to guarantee that the people who are really good at this will still always have a role to play in the sales motion. But yeah, it’s, it’s a big question mark for me. It’s something that I’m really interested in.

0:28:59 – (Will Aitken): But I do, I Don’t. I’m not saying I like it, but I can also see that there is a big problem that I think that.

0:29:07 – (Bob Woods): That, yeah, so that’s a real interesting, yeah, that’s a real interesting insight in that. You know, one of the reasons why AI is being so successful, which I don’t know if you’re going to hear a lot of people actually admit this, is, is because the sales process kind of sucks.

0:29:24 – (Will Aitken): Let’s look at the root of the issue, right?

0:29:27 – (Bob Woods): Yeah.

0:29:27 – (Will Aitken): And I think, I think that’s, that’s the problem.

0:29:31 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So, dare I ask my next question? What’s the solution?

0:29:38 – (Will Aitken): Still figuring that out myself. But yeah, the thing you can do is build a brand, be yourself. Don’t be like, let’s look at AI. It’s some of its parts, right? It’s repetitive learning from the massive sample set that’s out there.

0:29:56 – (Will Aitken): So don’t be generic, don’t be anything that AI can do. Don’t do those things.

0:30:04 – (Will Aitken): Be imperfect, be yourself, be human, be funny, be thoughtful, be focused on problems like we mentioned earlier, get in front of the, the camera on, on video in your prospecting even. Because even though there are these AI avatars, they’re still kind of wacky and off-looking, and they’re probably gonna get better. But even that, like, sure, AI might be able to replace a video of me sat here doing this, but can it replace a video of me stepping around and walking around again, sighted and showing so much emotion? It can’t. It just moves the mouth, you know, and just does it from a weird, generic AI script. So there’s, there’s things that I feel like we should all be doing and we should be leaning into those things more.

0:30:43 – (Bob Woods): All right, so cool. So with all of that, I think where we’re going to start the wrap-up process. So, I really enjoy ending each episode with a great takeaway for those who are listening. So, Will Aitken, what is one thing our audience members can do right now to? And let’s just go broadly here to improve their sales.

0:31:08 – (Will Aitken): Well, let’s start with something that AI isn’t breaking up right now. Referrals, human connections, building a network. So I would say every seller out there should be, whether you’re outbound or you’re managing a sales process, or you’re doing both, should be asking for referrals because pipeline comes from referrals and some of the warmest pipeline can come from a referral. So, anyone you’re talking to, look for the opportunities where you should ask for referrals. I think a lot of people don’t. And it’s similar to why a lot of people don’t ask for the sale. They’re afraid of hearing no.

0:31:37 – (Will Aitken): Just ask. Anytime you hear someone say, yeah, we’d like to move forward with you, or hey, we’re going to put this project on hold, or even if they you cold call them, they say, no, we’ve already got something in place or we don’t feel like it’s an issue for us. Or they say, yeah, I’d love to take a meeting. Then that’s where you can ask the question. Awesome, great. Excited to begin working with you. Or I’m looking forward to meeting next week, or oh, that’s a shame this got put on hold. Or that’s all right. Not everyone’s a fit for us.

0:32:01 – (Will Aitken): Then you can say something like, but do you mind if I ask you a quick favor? You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who’s a bit like yourself who might be able to benefit from a conversation with me about X problem and that will. They’ll typically think of someone. In some cases, they might be willing to introduce you. But sometimes, all you need is a name. Because one of the most relevant messages you could ever send to a complete stranger is, hey, I just had a chat with Bob and he said you might be facing this issue or you might be interested in this. Here’s a little bit about how we help.

0:32:31 – (Will Aitken): Does this sound relevant to you? Sometimes, all you need is a name. That’s one of the best outbound messages you could ever send to anyone. Account executives have a ton of opportunities to generate more referrals that way. So ask referral anytime someone says yes or no.

0:32:46 – (Bob Woods): Excellent, excellent stuff. So before we turn out the lights in the virtual studio here, which I’m not sure exactly how that would even work, but before we go, how can people get in touch with you?

0:32:58 – (Will Aitken): Yeah, a few ways. LinkedIn. I’m obviously quite active there. Will Aitken. I’ve also got a website, will aitken.com. Yep, I beat all the other Will Aitkens for that one. And I’ve also got a YouTube channel called Sales Feed. So there’s some good long-form and short form content over there that you can use to sharpen up your sales skills.

0:33:15 – (Bob Woods): And, and, and this is where I get to sound like a radio DJ just a little bit here because I say, also check out Will’s merch on his [email protected]. Seriously, he’s got three things up there right now. I don’t see the hat on here.

0:33:31 – (Will Aitken): Yeah. I had to take it down because there were some logistical issues, but I’m putting it back on. I’m redoing my website right now because I just don’t like the way it looks.

0:33:40 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:33:42 – (Will Aitken): I mean, you can probably see what I mean by looking at it. Maybe by the time this comes out, it might have changed.

0:33:47 – (Bob Woods): That’s true. That’s a good point. So, I mean, there is a T-shirt I love that says, I hope this email finds you well. And it’s got like the wet paint going down effect, showing that that message obviously sucks.

0:34:00 – (Will Aitken): That’s a great conversation starter, by the way. Wear that at an airport.

0:34:02 – (Bob Woods): Yeah.

0:34:03 – (Will Aitken): And be like, oh, that’s so funny. I’ve had air hostesses, I had other people who are. Who are in business say, oh, I hope this finds you well. It’s hilarious.

0:34:12 – (Bob Woods): And there’s also a mouse pad and a commission juice mug as well. So, yeah, I mean, you can put a wide variety of things in there that could probably be considered commission juice, some of which I probably don’t want to hear about. Yeah. So, you know, something we always talk about, we have our own phrases and things like that around here. They’re not funny is the only problem. But I may do our own merch store at some point. That should be. That’s interesting. May have to think about that.

0:34:44 – (Bob Woods): So in the meantime, professional fixer of things that are broken. Will Aitken, thank you so much for joining us today.

0:34:54 – (Will Aitken): Thank you ever so much for having me, Bob. Great conversation. Really appreciate it.

0:34:58 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, same here. Same here. And thank you for streaming this episode of Making Sales Social. So remember, when you’re out and about this week or any week, be sure to smile for the camera or do whatever it is that you’re doing. Have a laugh or two when you’re sharing and talking with people, and make your Sales Social. Don’t miss an episode. Visit the socialsaleslink.com podcast. Leave a review down below.

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