Welcome to the New Year! In our 2024 kickoff episode we examine the evolving realm of "social selling" and the strategic approach required for B2B success in today's fast-paced digital marketplace.
This episode is focused on redefining our understanding of relationship building in sales. We explore how the digital era has transformed the dynamics of business interactions, emphasizing the importance of personal branding and authentic engagement in a post-pandemic world.
Our discussion highlights the significance of human connections in an increasingly automated environment. We emphasize that genuine interactions and exceptional service remain fundamental to successful sales, despite the advancements in technology.
Additionally, we delve into the role of Artificial Intelligence in sales, moving beyond the usual buzzwords to offer a realistic perspective. We explore how AI can complement traditional sales skills, aiding in strategy development and content targeting and share insights on how this technology integrates into our sales approaches, enhancing our capabilities while underscoring the value of authenticity and personal touch in building relationships.
Join us as we navigate these topics, offering practical advice and insights to help you excel in the modern sales landscape.
Welcome to the New Year! In our 2024 kickoff episode we examine the evolving realm of "social selling" and the strategic approach required for B2B success in today's fast-paced digital marketplace.
This episode is focused on redefining our understanding of relationship building in sales. We explore how the digital era has transformed the dynamics of business interactions, emphasizing the importance of personal branding and authentic engagement in a post-pandemic world.
Our discussion highlights the significance of human connections in an increasingly automated environment. We emphasize that genuine interactions and exceptional service remain fundamental to successful sales, despite the advancements in technology.
Additionally, we delve into the role of Artificial Intelligence in sales, moving beyond the usual buzzwords to offer a realistic perspective. We explore how AI can complement traditional sales skills, aiding in strategy development and content targeting and share insights on how this technology integrates into our sales approaches, enhancing our capabilities while underscoring the value of authenticity and personal touch in building relationships.
Join us as we navigate these topics, offering practical advice and insights to help you excel in the modern sales landscape.
Welcome to Social Selling 2.0 Live Show and Podcast, where each week, we explore the future of B2B sales. Social has changed the B2B and professional services landscape forever. Capturing and keeping buyer attention has never been more challenging. Our mission is to help you discover new strategies, new technologies, new go-to-market systems and stay up-to-date with what is working now in B2B sales. Your hosts are Carson Hedy, the number one social seller at Microsoft, tom Burton, a best-selling author and B2B sales specialist, and Brandon Lee, an entrepreneur with multiple seven and eight figure exits and a leading voice in LinkedIn social selling. Brandon and Tom also lead Social Selling 2.0 Solutions, which offers turnkey consulting, coaching and training to B2B sales leaders. Now let's start the show.
Speaker 2:Happy New Year, hey Tom.
Speaker 3:Happy New Year to you. Happy New Year everybody.
Speaker 2:Is it cold in Atlanta? You look bundled up.
Speaker 3:You know what? So my office is in the basement. It's freaking cold in Atlanta, and then my basement, of course, is just a big concrete box that keeps all the cold air, and I think it's probably warmer outside than it is in my basement, but come June my basement's a great place to be.
Speaker 2:That's right, it's the spring weather, perfect weather for early winter.
Speaker 3:My basement sits at about 65 for the outmost of the year, but in the winter it drops down to I don't know 58. And it's just way too expensive to run the heat.
Speaker 2:So Well, anyway, good to be back. Happy New Year to everybody. Carson will be here in about 20 minutes, 25 minutes. I don't know how Microsoft, how they schedule meetings during the middle, is. I don't know how that happens.
Speaker 3:I think they know our show is happening Right.
Speaker 2:It's got to be like a master thing on the calendar, not that. Anyway, we'll take that up.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, that's right, so let's welcome everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, welcome, and if you're also in your basement freezing, let us know. Or anywhere. Because we've had trouble getting the chats come through the last couple of times, so hopefully we hear oh there's Bob. Good, good, happy New Year to you, bob, as well. So, brandon, we have some news.
Speaker 3:We do and we're going to. You see, butch says it's really cold in Atlanta.
Speaker 2:He backed you up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he backed me up. So yeah, we have some news. Are we ready to share it? We too? Bad Carson is not here.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, he'll be here, so we'll, we'll, we'll share it again when he gets here. Yeah, becky said it warm in her office in Cincinnati or in North Carolina. Yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 3:Well, becky, so you know, my office was warm with my foot heater until Tom made me turn it off because he could hear it and he didn't want to, you know, ruin the show. So I get to freeze so that our sound is properly done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you start getting icicles, if, you start getting icicles on your beard or something, we'll, we'll switch it back on. We'll start back on, and welcome from Tara as well, in Cincinnati, all right. Well, brandon, take us to. Let's start talking a little bit about the news and what we're doing and what 2024 holds.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I tell you it's going to be exciting too with I'm, you know, bob butch, becky and probably Tara as well. But I know for sure Bob butch and Becky I mean this is kind of their world as well. Look, everybody, everybody knows I hate the term social selling. I've hated it for years. I used it reluctantly when we, when we started the show social selling for newbies, I I gritted my teeth and said, okay, fine, tom, because it was the right SEO word to use. And then when we moved it again thanks, dave, see, dave loves me, tom. Yeah, dave, dave says I could use my foot heater. Thanks, dave, dave. We got to get a call on the calendar, you know.
Speaker 3:And then when we changed it to social selling 2.0, again I kind of reluctantly but like, yeah, I know in theory it's the right SEO term and I know it's a large search term, but it wasn't the right descriptive term it's. I think that two things I have wrong with it and reason why and I didn't wear my shirt, because they're they're thin little t-shirts and it's too cold. You know, my t-shirts that say social selling socks was designed to capture attention because people say, well, aren't you a LinkedIn guy? It's like yeah well, linkedin is different than social selling in my opinion and let me tell you why, because you guys know me, I'm not shy with my opinion and so, like, social selling has been bastardized by lots of people that used it as a term to sell stuff. I'll just leave it at that but a lot of it wasn't good selling activities, it was pitch slapping, it was messaging at scale, it was let me go, you know, post this brochure and people are going to, you know, send POs out of the sky, like all these bad, dumb sales activities, and that kind of became what social selling was, and especially for anybody that started in anything in you know, 2014, 2015, 2013,.
Speaker 3:Social selling was just a bunch of crap, tools and services, in my opinion. So the hangover to the term social selling is still there and that's why I didn't like it. And really, what we are talking about is sales, but in a modern way, because the phones are different. Like you know, when I started my first call center with outbound sales, we didn't even have caller ID right. So caller ID and cell phones and people working remotely all these things are changing it. So I like the term modern selling because it's true, the hard part is what the heck does modern me. Am I on target here, tom?
Speaker 2:No, I think that's a part of it, so, and I'll back up for him and I, just so that everyone kind of has some context. So we are changing the name of the show Sometime this month. There's some logistics we have to work through everything like that, but sometime in the month of January the show will be changed to mastering, modern selling and the tagline. I want to make sure I get it right is relationship, social and AI and the buyer's center cage.
Speaker 2:So the reason that we decided to change it is for exactly what you're saying, brandon is that there was a lot of stigma and a lot of, I guess, stuff that came along with the social selling name. But if you look at the guests that we've had over the last year and if you look at the topics that we've discussed and if you look at our guest list, that as we move forward, our conversations went way beyond what's considered social selling. So we felt like we were underselling what we were doing a bit and that we were undervaluing what we were doing on some of the things and be able to reach a broader audience, because a lot of people just are like I don't know, I don't like social selling or whatever. It comes with a stigma, like you said before. So I think that's what you described I think is a huge part of that decision.
Speaker 2:But it's also looking at, hey, where the world is going, and we're going to talk about some of the topics that we're going to be talking about this year in a minute, but also just the guests, and if you look at the guest lineup that we have over the next couple of months like this is the last week, I think, which is the two or three of us for, I don't know two, a couple of months anyway. These are not just social selling people, these are CEOs, these are business owners, these are all over the different place that are experts in their own right and what they're doing in modern selling and using modern sales techniques. So a bit more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because I think selling has become a team sport and that's not fair to say, because selling always was part of the team. You could pull in your CEO to go help close an important deal Years ago if you were traveling or getting in a car and things like that. The difference now is modern selling is about reputation. You can call it a personal brand, but it's about reputation. You know, is your C-suite known in the industry? Are they creating thought leadership content? Are they engaging with other people online so that they, and therefore their brand, are known?
Speaker 3:Is your C-suite presence on LinkedIn such that when your HR department goes and recruits talent, that the talent's like oh, I know who your CEO is. Or do they go what's your company? Again? Because the first thing people do when they whether it's a prospect, you're getting recruited, it's a potential vendor, anything is. We go to LinkedIn and we go who are these people? Right, who are they? And if you don't have a presence, you don't have a reputation. Nobody knows about you and you're not starting at zero. You're starting at negative numbers, in my opinion, because if you're a competitor, the C-suite is active. They're creating content, they're doing videos, the company has a show. More people on the team are active in social and building reputation and conversation and all that they're gonna win.
Speaker 2:Yeah and that is modern, and that's modern right.
Speaker 3:And that's modern.
Speaker 2:Right, so let's talk about some of the topics and conversations that we're gonna be having here coming up.
Speaker 3:Can I throw this out, especially like Becky and Butch and Bob and others that are on there that I don't see If you're in sales or you're in sales training or you're in sales leadership, I'd really love to hear, whether it's here in the comments or direct message me like I am genuinely curious because I think we are at we're at a tipping point, or a turning point, if you will, and it comes to the topics that you wanna talk about, tom.
Speaker 2:When you say a turning point, meaning just that we are at a tipping point in terms of maybe our tolerance for keeping, keep doing the same thing and expecting a different results that as a not just as an individual but as an industry we're really realizing that we're just not going back to the way that it was five years ago or four years ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah and here's what I mean by that in detail too is for the last several years I've been pounding the drum that sales has changed, the buyer journey has changed all of this and I truly believed what I was saying. But when I started talking to more people, they could agree with it, but it wasn't enough that they were willing to make changes. A lot of people weren't willing to make changes. Then COVID threw everything into a tailspin, because, even if your sales weren't producing like you needed them to, you had an excuse. It had nothing to do with the way we sold. It had to do with COVID, covid. Oh, covid, it'll go back to normal. We heard that a lot. Oh, we're just waiting for it to go back to normal. We're holding on through 2020. Hoping 2021 is going to go back to normal. Okay, well, now we're 21, 22, 23 through it.
Speaker 3:We're three years through it, and I think now people are facing their biggest fear, which is our sales motions are not producing and I don't believe we're going back to whatever normal was. And I think now more people out of necessity, not out of innovation, or want they're being forced into having new conversations and not to throw, not to use names, but we have a couple of new clients coming on with Fistbump, with some of our concierge services, that they'll tell you. They're doing this kicking and screaming because they didn't want to change. They wanted to stick with the old stuff of let's go make 50 calls, let's get on a plane, let's take people to events and do things the old way, because I like doing it that way. But they've just run out of runway of hoping that that's going to turn a corner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I think for sure the there's a there's a realization I guess I see it in the conversations that we've had with people is there's definitely a realization that I've got it. We've got to do something different. I think that everyone is. I think there's degrees of how much change that people are willing to do at one time, but they're willing to at least look at some things differently and that's exactly what the show what I really want the show to be over the next year is really helping to provide with, not only would just ask, but with our guests to get people comfortable about that and comfortable with making that change and that shift and and so forth. So I want to hit a couple of questions and I want to go into kind of our topic. But Bob brought up, how successful have you been at convincing CEOs to pay attention to their personal brand?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because I was looking at it and you know. But that's a. We can almost have an entire show on that.
Speaker 2:Have an entire show on that.
Speaker 3:Yes, you know and in Bob, I would say, my answer is this, similar to what I was just saying.
Speaker 3:It's evolving. It's evolving pretty quickly and you know, we're bringing on a new customer next this month when a CEO flat out told me you know, a few years ago I wouldn't even be sitting here having this conversation. It's out of necessity. We just we've got to do something different, and we're not sure what it is. And here's the downside, for what we do is that we're also competing. As we talk about Jolt Effect which Jolt Effect is going to be on my desk all year around, because I think this, what we learn from this, is going to drive so much of what we do, because the fear of messing up is so big right now, that this CEO told me we've made, you know, we spent a lot of money over the years on SEO, on paid campaigns, on LinkedIn ads, and none of them produced, which is why they wouldn't have talked to us before about social selling, but they're talking to us now out of desperation. So I don't know if that answers your question, bob, but that's where it's happening for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we've had a lot of people give excuses about not wanting to do that as a CEO and not having to deal with their concerns. Maybe is a better word, but I do agree that now they're looking at OK, there's not a lot of rules.
Speaker 3:Now we need to be looking at things, things differently, and I think the C-suite is still really scared. In fact, we've had two clients that were onboarding this month where, when it came down to you know, the CEO of the C-suite, the CEO of the C-suite of Concierge program the CEO tapped out and said why don't we do it with the sales leader? Right, and I think if you know, if any of them are watching, you're going to know who I'm. They're going to know I'm talking about them. But look, it's scary. But there's. You know, we've got to help talk to people about.
Speaker 3:This isn't self promotion, it's brand promotion. But we're going through you and that's a weird thing, because so many C-suite leaders didn't get to become the leader by promoting themselves and pounding their chest and what they see as social media is influencers on Instagram or what their kids do with their little, you know, duck face pictures and things, and they go. I'm not doing that, yeah, we're not asking you to do that. So it's still, bob, it's an ongoing conversation, it's an education process. It's getting them comfortable. I think the fact that you know, tom and I have gray in our beards it's helping and we're helping them get comfortable with what we're talking about and how it works, but it's still scary and it's they're still fighting the client. I don't think two of the customers we've added this month are doing this out of excitement. They're doing it out of necessity.
Speaker 2:But we need to make it excitement. We'll make it exciting, yeah. So I want to hit on a couple of things and then we'll go back. I want to make sure I say your name right here, but I think she brings up some great points here. The reasons why sales strategies change right, market dynamics, technology advancement, competitive land state, customer expectations All of those things have come together over the last period of time to create this perfect storm, yeah.
Speaker 3:That is so good. Yeah, I don't. I don't know her and hopefully we're pronouncing her name right, but I want to that, spot on.
Speaker 2:Yep, yep. And then another comment from Bob here right, the basics have not changed, which we're going to get back to in a minute. It's still human to human communication, which is modern selling, and also mean revisiting what hasn't changed. I think that is super important because we are going to incorporate into modern selling the fundamentals of what hasn't changed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great transition for us. Thanks, bob, way to tee it up. And, jeff, I see your comment on there. Thank you so much for that encouragement. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I believe that this is a part of modern selling as well, when, pre-social days, if you will know, like and trust, we took customers to lunch, we took them to dinner, we went golfing, we went to ball games and we self-disclosed, we shared and we asked them questions about themselves. And oh, tell me about your family? Oh, your kids are in high school. Where do they go to school? What do they do? Are they into sports? Oh, they're in the band, they're in theater, whatever.
Speaker 3:We met people, human to human, with social media. When it started, everything was let me just go post the best versions of myself. And, as I said, everyone hid behind their title. Right, oh, look what I do for work, look at my career, look how successful I've been. But that's never been a part of sales, Like. It always came later. And we have this opportunity with social through publishing post that talks about who we are as human beings, what we do as a volunteer, what we do with our family. Now, yeah, bring it back. This isn't Facebook, I'm not taking pictures of my meal and telling everybody to go eat it. You know Bob's big boy or whatever but sharing who we are helps people get to know us, because no, like and trust is still very important, and it comes to one of the first things that we've talked about, which is building relationships is important again.
Speaker 2:So let's go back and kind of reverse engineer our title of our new title anyway for our new title, Okay. So again, the new title is going to be mastering modern selling relationships, social and AI and the buyer centric age. So let's start with that last term, buyer centric age, and let's kind of work backwards on that, because it's certainly something we've talked about. It's something I'm pretty passionate about. I wrote a book on the subject. Is Brandon? What do we mean, kind of at a high level? What do we mean by the buyer centric age? What are we talking about when we use that term?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, tom you said this in one of our internal meeting conversations is buyer centric or the buyer journey is a lot like losing weight, right? In that everybody most of us all agree. Oh yeah, I could probably lose some weight and we could even agree that you know we should be doing X, y or Z to lose weight, but we don't actually do anything about it. Most of us just don't do anything about it. And you're spot on.
Speaker 3:I think the buyer journey or buyer centric is something that gets a lot of head nods, gets a lot of lip service, but then companies go back to their seller centric actions because it's what they know, it's the KPIs they've always used and it feels like something they can control, and I guess they can. You can control it, right. If the KPIs make 100 calls a day, you can tell if somebody made 100 calls a day. Now, it doesn't mean the 100 calls were worth a day I'm done anything for you, but you can judge and count and quantify if somebody made 100 calls a day. So the buyer centric era or age is truly accepting that the buyers are in control and we can't force them into our sales, our linear sales motions and expect them to have a good buying experience. How's that for my definition or the way I explain it?
Speaker 2:I think that's great, and it's not just their buying experiences. We can expect that we can get a result or a forecastable, predictable revenue model. That is the challenge of forcing the buyer into our seller centric process, and then we use that process for our forecasting. We use that for our pipelines and everything. It is our pipeline, so to speak, and the problem is that then we believe that that is the basis of our forecast when in fact, in reality the buyer isn't going. Yes, brandon, I'm going to follow your seller, your process that you're going to go through, and I know I'm in stage three. So yeah, I'm probably at 75%. You can put me in there at 70. That's not the way they're looking at the world.
Speaker 3:I was on a call with a sales leader a couple hours ago and one of the things he said which was awesome, he said you know, the thing that's driven companies that I've worked for nuts until they see my whole process is the people I talk to this year start buying for me next year. But I'm always the number one sales rep. What he's saying there is he's allowing the buyers to lead the process and a lot of times it takes that long for them to get comfortable, but he stays in communication with them, he builds relationship with them and allows the buyer to go at their pace. But the cool thing with that process is he's always with them.
Speaker 2:Well, he's hopefully influencing them and potentially accelerating that pace through that influence, right. So again, we want to make sure it's not like, oh, I'm just going to sit back and wait for it to happen. There's definitely, you're definitely controlling or influencing the process. It's just facilitating versus controlling through your process there.
Speaker 3:Right. A lot of seller centric linear models is get them through the next 30 days, right. If they're not ready to buy, move on. Well, you're going to lose a lot of opportunity because buyers aren't going to play your fabricated 30 days or 60 day cycle. They're going to play in the cycle that is best for them, and if you don't have systems of place that allow for that, your sales team is going to have a lot of wasted energy and a lot of wasted activity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're going to be introducing a lot more. We introduced it this last year, the last couple of years, but we're going to be introducing a lot more about how do you manage and track in a buyer centric age. What is, how do you replace the traditional funnel Right, or what is the alternative to the traditional funnel? All of those types of things are just one of the key topics we're going to be dealing with in the new year. And I want to also just you know, I think Dave, who's a salesperson right is, says if I am in control, if I get pushed, I recoil. Right, if you want to push somebody out of your process, push them, as we know, too hard. We're all that way, right. We all just kind of run for cover along the way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you know what's good about that too, is Dave's a sales guy. I used to love selling to salespeople because salespeople were always so sympathetic, like they'd been on the other side. But even then, like even what Dave is saying is I am a salesperson, but you pushed me too hard, I'm gone, yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, so buyer centric is one of the things we're definitely going to be focusing on here. The other three things that are in the subtitle here is relationships, social and AI, so I don't know where do you want to start next on those three Brandon that are there.
Speaker 3:You know, let's talk about relationships, because I think that there's a lot of confusion about relationships in social or relationships in anything virtual and digital.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's unpack that a bit.
Speaker 3:I think there's a lot of variables that are influencing this. I think some of the biggest variables were we threw away in a lot of industries and therefore a lot of the content around sales pushed out relationship. Now there's a lot of voices out there like our friend, larry Levine, who's never gotten rid of relationships. You know Mike Weinberg was on Anthony and Irino, I mean they still would talk relationship. But there was a lot of tech tools, there's a lot of SaaS tools that pushed out relationship and said it's about automation, it's about mass production, and throw out a really wide net and you're going to catch some fish. That started to treat buyers like they were numbers, like they didn't matter, and it took relationships and made it a secondary or a tertiary category when it came to sales.
Speaker 3:And a lot of those companies I don't want to name names of tools, but a lot of those SaaS tools are either going out of business or struggling because their customers aren't renewing, because those automation motions just didn't produce. And the reason they didn't produce is no buyer in the world, no human being in the world, wants to be treated that way. And we're getting back to the relationship side because the buyer motion like, yeah, it was really cool when we could put up a landing page and people would go there and give us their email address and phone number to download a PDF. And then we called and bugged the crap out of them and ruined the whole concept of Inbound, because now people don't want to put their email or their phone number in anywhere because they know what's going to happen. So we've kind of ruined that and it is going to go back to it's already moving back to.
Speaker 3:Buyers are going to get on the phone with people that they know, that they're connected to, that, they know about that. It doesn't even have to be like their best buddies with them. But do you have a social presence? Are you commenting on other people's content? Are you somebody who looks like a human being behind your LinkedIn account and therefore somebody would say, yeah, I get on a phone with you?
Speaker 2:Well, and you were telling me before the show, right before we started here, is that you're getting now several conversations, phone conversations, each day that entirely 100% emanated from your LinkedIn work. Right, yeah, no paid ads, no, whatever, no email blast, none of it. It's all entirely from that. And what I would. I find the most interesting as you talk about that is the quality of the conversations that you're having. Right, you're coming into those conversations and the people are willing to really talk to you, they're willing to confide.
Speaker 3:I guess, for lack of better words, yeah, I think, like one of the calls I got on today and I want everyone to hear this as an example. This isn't me. This is the example of what we do and the reason we do the show, the reason I comment. I make 50 comments on average per day on other people's posts. I send direct messages to people thanking them for liking stuff and commenting on stuff. The reason I do all that is because when I am, when I do get on a phone, like today, the guy said thanks for getting on the call with me and I said no, no, thank you. He's like no, I couldn't believe that. You know, I've watched your show and you were willing to get on the phone with me. And not only that, you sent me a message and you engaged it Like again, that's the. This isn't me going. Oh, look at me. This is look at what we do, and we do it for a reason.
Speaker 3:I gone back to the basics of relationship building, but the way that we do it on LinkedIn is we post content. We post personal content, we post business content. It's thought leadership information. I comment on other people's content why? Well, because when I comment on their stuff, it affirms them. It's me going to them and talking about what they want to talk about, not trying to force people to talk about what I want to talk about. Right, I connect people together when it's good for them. It's just going back to all the basic stuff that we've known about serving people and do I have it here?
Speaker 3:I do, and I posted about this today, but you know I read this every January. I pick it back up and I start going through it just as that reminder of treat people good and so all those activities are social based activities, but they're from a strategy of building relationships. And then when you follow it up with sending connection requests to people hey, you looked at my profile. You commented on this post that Tom did, and you and I both commented on Tom's post I noticed we're not connected.
Speaker 3:Can we connect? They do, and go gosh, if you ever want to get on a call and have a get to know you conversation, let's do it. People say, yes, right, it's relationship building in a digital world which is taking all the skillset we did in a networking room or a networking event or going to a trade show and applying it into LinkedIn and, holy smokes, it works. People want to get on the call. They want to talk to you and they feel like they know you when you get on the call because your behavior has already demonstrated that You've already disclosed about yourself.
Speaker 2:And that first call. I want to make sure we're really clear on this and this is something where I think we're going to do more of this year. The first call is a start or it's in the early stages of that relationship. It's not like you're getting off the call necessarily and they're sending you a PO immediately after the phone call. But now you're able to start, you're starting to build that trust and now you can start working with them based on their, what their needs are, what their buyer journey is to actually get to lead them to that result or not at this point If they have the interest right.
Speaker 3:I mean, I was very fortunate today. Two first calls I had today came through social. They were good to know you calls, they might even actually be listening, I don't know. Both of them ended with hey, let's explore this a little bit more. I'd like to learn more. I'd like to introduce you to our marketing team whatever, like there was different versions of that, but I did not go into that meeting going. I'm going to go sell them something. I'm going to put them into my pipeline, I'm going to. Okay, I'm on the 30 day clock. That's the big difference and it's hard for a lot of sales leaders because it feels out of control. And the irony of it is for me, the more I serve people and the less I try selling, the more we seem to sell.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I want to hit some of these comments because I think we're getting some great comments and some agreement on this. We're gonna start way back up here with butch, is you know? We have to meet buyers where they are not where they wish they were. What not where we wish they were. That's a really, really Good point.
Speaker 3:Well, you know what I like about that real quick butch butch. You say that is. That's another one of those things. It is so Important and so relevant and it's one of those statements that we can very easily give lip service to and just move on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's like the losing weight thing we talked about right.
Speaker 3:Does your sales motions, does your sales activities, are your KPIs, are all these things consistent with that statement? Or do we say that statement flippantly, flippantly, and then go over here and we, okay, a hundred KPIs, make a hundred calls, da, da, da, da da.
Speaker 2:So if anybody wants to sell something to Dave, he says it's pretty simple all you have to do is allow me to know you, like you and trust you at my pace, and I'm an easy sale. So there you go, right, I mean, and it's true, though. I mean it's, it's, it's really is, it really is true, and I'm gonna. I thought Bob's comment here was great as well. How we, you know over rotated on the science of selling a treat as a numbers game and forgot, forgotten, the artistic aspects of selling.
Speaker 3:I think that's on. I mean I think a lot of. I mean we, tom, help me out. I just blinked on the book around the SDR model that came out of sales for. Predictable revenue right, predictable revenue came out and we quantified everything. Right, that's what a BDR, sdr model was. Oh, just put a bunch of young people on the phone and pound, pound, pound and asked for demos and then hand them off to the SDR or the BDR from the SDR. And it was a quantified game and we forgot all about the art.
Speaker 2:You know, the art of selling, the art of relationship building, the art of just treating people well and not treating them like they're a number and Jeff has made a couple of Really good examples go check them out in the comment I won't read them all year of a couple of people that have really are doing this well right, that are really building their personal brand and have used that to Really really expand not only just the sales but their business in general. Mark our friend. Mark quality, quality, quality. Then you will show up as a worthy advisor. Quality over quantity is.
Speaker 2:You know, we get that a lot of different times here. Another friend of ours, chris, access to folks on the on the platform is quite amazing, and Bob again putting social back into social media. So that would be, and thank you for these comments. These are great. I feel like I'm like way behind on some of these things that are better here. No, dare, thank you. Very cool conversation and Last we'll we'll serve here with Bob because he has a music reference and we haven't done a good job with our movie references today with 38 special. Just hold on loosely, but don't let go. If you cling too tightly You're gonna lose control.
Speaker 3:All right, there we go good or a good 38 special reference Dang, we're gonna move this you're out of movies into into music.
Speaker 2:That's not a bad idea actually.
Speaker 3:I'd be horrible, that one.
Speaker 2:So let's let's talk a little bit about another. The other we've okay, so we've talked about buyer centric, we've talked about relationships. We also use this, this word AI, and our tagline here, and I'm sure some people are like, well, isn't that just completely counterintuitive to everything that we've just talked about? Here, and and and so forth.
Speaker 3:I Was pulling up some posts. There was a post this morning. Now I think I lost it. I tried to save it, but it was basically a let's bash AI Post. That AI comments are, you know, they're easy to spot, their lame, their waste of time, blah, blah, blah, blah blah, and I think that's a lot of, a lot of the emotion around AI right now.
Speaker 2:Well, I think a lot. I think AI has been Pigeon hold a bit in the sales world into a very specific use case which is writing linked in post, or writing comments or or even writing emails or things like that. What we're really going to and this is sort of hey, look who's here, carson.
Speaker 4:I Agree. I agree with Brandon, I think he. I think he's sounding and looking brilliant today.
Speaker 3:Thanks, carson. I appreciate that Carson's. Carson's been going through this with me and he knows how to, you know, get influence over me.
Speaker 4:Just compliment me a little bit and I'm only, I'm all his you know, I gotta say I recommend that book Frequently, just in my career, to folks that have been on my team, folks that I'm mentoring, because really I think that's where it all begins. That's it's it's so critical to get that core foundation, obviously, that's, you know, what we're all doing right now is we start Q1, right, you know, kind of setting the foundation for success. That's where it all starts is understanding the art of influence.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good stuff.
Speaker 4:Great to see you guys.
Speaker 3:You knew you too. We were wondering, carson, how do we get on the, the mastered Microsoft calendar, so they they don't accidentally Book you during our showtime, like don't they know when our show is Every week?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know it's rare that I, but I have to sometimes. I got to prioritize my my day right, so we had a leadership call and, and you know, couldn't, couldn't miss that. So yeah, I'm gonna kick it off the new year, but I'm excited that I that I work with guys like you that don't care when I show up. I mean, if only every job was like my co-hosting duties on this show.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, the salary we pay you is is diddly squat. So yeah, to be flexible. Well, tom jump, we'll jump us back in, because I can't wait to hear what Carson has to say.
Speaker 2:So, carson, we we've and we've had a ton of great comments today. We talked about the renaming of the show and, yeah, sorry, I couldn't resist. Yeah, can you tell everybody. So we talked about the renaming of the show Mastering, social selling, relationship, social Social selling. I say social selling.
Speaker 4:Now's the time to get the kinks at work. We'll go on. Next time it's like full guns of.
Speaker 2:Right, I'm gonna try this one more time Mastering modern selling, right with relation, the tagline relationship, social and AI and the buyer center gauge. So what we've been doing is kind of dissecting and reverse engineering that title. We talked a little bit about what we meant about buyer centric, we talked a little bit about Relationships and we were just about ready to start talking about AI when you came. So and and the role of AI and you know we were we were talking about is that AI could almost be looked at as counterintuitive to relationships and and all of that. But how do we actually use that in a way to actually help facilitate the relationship and the social aspect of it in the modern selling piece, versus just doing something to spit out an email or for a comment or so forth? So, carson, if you have a take on this, jump in.
Speaker 4:No, I showed up to listen and learn. No, no, I'm kidding as we thought about Changing the title, and I'm sure you probably shared some of this. You know realizing, look, social selling is no longer Social selling, it's just selling, it's leveraging all the tools that are available to us in order to better meet the buyer when they are, and I think that's what really led us down this path. You know, we started to really think about what does it mean to be buyer centric? How can you leverage technology in order to be more buyer centric in your approach? Buyers are leveraging AI right now to arm themselves with information in order to and they're exploring right they're also exploring ways that they can leverage artificial intelligence, and so, as we start to think about ways that not only AI can help our approach, you know Automating tasks that are, you know, maybe redundant, giving us more time.
Speaker 4:I was reading a statistic, I think, earlier today, in an article that was in Business Insider, that AI is currently saving salespeople two hours a day and just being able to automate different tasks. Automating tasks through the CRM. I have my own AI tools that are within not only my CRM, but also some of my LinkedIn tools sales navigator. You know tools like humantic that I talked about on this show. So I think those are the key things, and where AI is going to help us is giving us ready, readily accessible data so that we can show up sooner.
Speaker 4:We can have actionable insights. You know, wow, this person I can go into my sales navigator and it shows that they are a Prime buyer or they have, you know, higher propensity to engage with my organization because of some of their activity or who they're following in my organization, etc. All the way to you know, being able to ask AI about different ways that I could show up. You know insights that that could arm me with a conversation that might be Poignant and relevant to a C level or a VP level at the organization that I want to target.
Speaker 4:So there's a number of ways that it's being leveraged and I think right now we're really just unearthing that, from giving us more time In the day as sellers to arming us with more information, to also helping us figure out how we can be of value to the buyer. At this stage in the journey and that's the last piece of the puzzle is buyers are the ones that are really in the driver seat right now anything that we can do to help that drive goes smoothly and Go back to what we talk about. It feels like every week. Now right, brandon, about the jolt effect and, as we be, risk the decision for that buyer. That's how everybody wins.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and I, you know I want to. I want to add this to it and it's Carson. I was excellent when it comes to generative AI. I'm seeing a lot of content, a lot of opinion of AI. Generated comments are bad. They're generic. You can spot them a million miles away. I saw one comment on. I saw a post. It was like you know, ai comments and posts are horrible, bad, and one of the comments was 1,000%. They're the easiest thing to spot.
Speaker 3:Okay, everybody, take a breath, take a chill pill and relax, because some of the first tools that came on the market were all the people trying to make a fast buck leveraging AI and selling crappy tools, right, and now we got this whole group of people like, oh, I tried it and it didn't work. What else does that sound like? Like, didn't we just learn? We just did that? When they came out with the crappy LinkedIn tools, that pitch slapped everybody in our network that you know, oh, I'm gonna have this tool that's gonna go automatically, like a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 3:And yeah, you feel good about the activity, but it's not the right activity. It's not working. Slow down a little bit. There's great generative AI tools that are happening, that are being built right now that are coming out on the market. Carson just rattled off like five of them that he uses and I beg anybody to argue Carson's success and telling me he's wrong with the AI tools that he's using. I just bring the tone down a little bit and start using tools that are going to help you and don't throw all AI in the bucket of that's a bunch of crap, because I tried something three months ago, five months ago and it sucked, and I'll stop there for a little bit because it pisses me off.
Speaker 4:How do you?
Speaker 2:really do it? How do you really do it? You have brand new fired up again.
Speaker 4:I'm glad they made it to this episode.
Speaker 2:Carson. He was like really calm until you got here. I don't know, it's like always I have that effect on people.
Speaker 4:I actually Brandon, you'll love this I actually said that exact thing to a buyer today, not AI related, but exact thing to a buyer today about please tell me of any risk that you see in this path that we're going on together so that I can address and remediate it as quickly as possible. And guess what? I got an immediate response and this was a customer that had been ghosting us for a little bit of time right Now. Granted, there were holidays and things of that nature, but being able to marry a process and a technology by which we're going to have better data, we're going to be better informed and we're going to be able to automate tasks and give ourselves more time. And I'm loving the comments, man, you were spot on. We're getting some great comments in there today. Bob, what will a seller do with those extra two hours a day? That's a great question that I think we can unpack as we find out more. But I think and Jeff, jeff Wright, great comment top Gary Vee if you're not using AI every day, you're falling behind in business. That's the quote of the day, in my opinion.
Speaker 4:I think the key element is it's not a silver bullet. It's going to be some of the parts. It's how you use it. Does it make us better? I'm sure that when somebody decided to create the sand wedge, they realized that it would give you an ability to get out of the bunker, which I need greatly more frequently than maybe using the pitching wedge. But you can't play your whole game with that. You might be able to play with a rake if you're 10 cup there's my movie reference but you're not going to be able to change the game with just AI. You've got to use it right and we're figuring that out. I love the fact that there's people that are tinkering with it.
Speaker 4:And yeah, it's noise when I see these comments that I know I saw some of them over the weekend, even they do they stand out but at the same time, hi, darren McKee, good to see you, my friend, we got to get you there this year. You guys brought out the big guns today in the comments, but no, those are some of my thoughts. I love what you said, Brian.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think the AI AI, frankly, is probably my biggest passion for 2024 is Brandon does and I really believe that through the intelligent use of AI and the good use of AI, you are going to have a huge potentially efficiency gain.
Speaker 2:Just like Bob's saying is what am I going to do with all these extra hours? I'm sure we'll find something to do with them. And the other thing is, I really do believe that, if done properly, it will enhance that customer experience and enable us to really really do the support the buyer journey rather than fight the buyer journey as we talk about with ever. It's going to allow us to provide that experience to the buyer in their journey, in their thing, but at the same time, allow us, as sales or as businesses, to actually have the ability to forecast, predict and everything that we need to run a business. So I really think that AI is going to be the catalyst to do a lot of those things, and AI as we know it right now, with chat, gpt, compared to what it will be in six to nine months, is going to be very different.
Speaker 4:Another cool thing that I know Brandon talks about a lot too is the alignment with sales and marketing and how we're going to have to work very closely together, and you know it's great.
Speaker 4:And again, I know that I am way off the beaten path when it comes to enterprise selling, as an example, that I've been working very closely with marketing at my organization for the last several years, and what's fascinating to me right now is that we are gaining so much time because of what we're able to do from an AI perspective to create content and to get it out on social to create internal curated posts that our employees can pick up, but also creating content that can go directly to customers. We're creating our own newsletters, but I have a weekly huddle with marketing so we can get exactly what we need created together. Make sure we're staying aligned with goals. So, when you think about that time that you're freeing up, how can you use it to really align to the core pillars that are gonna make you more successful this year? What is gonna be the key relationships, internally and also externally, that you can create with that extra time?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know what Carson you just dawned on me too. As you know, on the show we talk about, like you're the enterprise sales guy, I've focused more on SMB on the sales side, tom Bringson, the tech and the marketing side. Ai for smaller companies is gonna be a great equalizer If you want a sales and marketing fusion symmetry relationship, like Carson has with his marketing team at Microsoft and the tendency is gonna be. I really can't wait to read that comment. You guys both snickered and I can't pay attention to it yet, but Larry's back.
Speaker 3:good. But look if, as an SMB, if you want to have a system like what Carson has at Microsoft right the tendencies to say, oh well, of course Carson has out at Microsoft, they have these big pockets and they have all these people Okay, if you wanna be, if you're an SMB and you wanna get better alignment and fusion between marketing and sales, that's where AI is gonna help you. You need a competitive analysis for a customer. That would take normally. I think a lot of SMBs don't do it real well because they just don't have time or the resources to do it. Ai becomes your resource to do it. Knock that thing out. Now you've got your competitive analysis, you want some negotiation strategies to a specific customer on a specific product. I don't have a month to go research it. Use AI to get that done. There's so many tools. There's so many ways that AI can turn this into a level playing field and you can start to have systems like larger companies without the budget and without the people.
Speaker 4:And, let's be real, I'm gonna give a shout out to all my enterprise selling brethren out there. Most of us know that a lot of our big organizations right now they may not be budgeting for these additional tools and they may still be doing some tried and true ways of aligning. Be the change. If you see that opportunity as a seller or as a sales leader, to connect with folks internally and improve and shore up using AI and using some of these things. That's how I've really written my own ticket in my career. It's just always being that problem eliminator or that licensed troubleshooter. You can do the same things and that's what's gonna make you super valuable. And, jeff, we need to connect.
Speaker 4:Your comment about working with a nonprofit resonated with me. I work with a ton of them. I would love to bounce some ideas off of each other and now we've got a flash up. We've got royalty in the house, mr Larry Levine. Larry, you're spot on and I think what this really speaks to and definitely wanna get Brandon and Tom's thoughts. But I mean, my first thought when I read this is it goes back to everything that Larry lives and embodies and teaches and preaches and writes about it's. If you're not going to be an authentic seller and be genuine and form actual relationships and you don't practice the fundamentals of being a great seller, doesn't matter how good you are with AI. We talk a lot on this show about how technology can help you open doors that wouldn't have been open to you otherwise or find people that you may not have been able to connect with otherwise. But if you don't earn the right to be that trusted advisor, invest in the relationship, show up at value, serve them, try to deliver a win, you're dead on arrival.
Speaker 3:In At the same time. If we've got some AI generated content, if a salesperson takes it, publishes and press send, throws it in an email and press send and doesn't actually read it to educate themselves, then that's their mistake. Let AI help you in creating things, but then consume your own content and learn it. Educate yourself so that, as you move forward, you're that much more well equipped. I think that's what we've got to be careful. It's not just hey, ai produced this for me and send it out. I guess some people can do that but if you're using AI and then you actually consume it, you're educating yourself faster than you would otherwise.
Speaker 4:Okay. So I live in a house dominated by females my wife and three daughters. Even the pets were girls, until I finally convinced a family to get a boy cat. I've always heard that the trick to wearing makeup is to make it look like you're not wearing any. The trick to leveraging AI is to make it look like you're not using any. I use AI constantly and I would bet you that most people would never detect the difference. It's subtle things. It's maybe leveraging an old transcript of something that I said on a show that I did two years ago and turning that into today's post, which I did, by the way. I think things like that because those messages can still be very relevant, but they can help you reframe. Don't ever publish the product that you get out of AI, because if you don't read it first and it doesn't sound like it's your voice, and it's not something that you feel and believe.
Speaker 4:It's not you being your genuine, authentic self. Be provocative, start conversations, but leverage AI to save you time, make you better. It plugs gaps that I would have forgotten. It completes my sentence for me so that I can get things done quickly.
Speaker 2:I think Larry said it perfectly no more empty AI yeah.
Speaker 4:New Larry hashtag.
Speaker 2:That's right, all right. Well, gentlemen, I have to wrap this up. I hate to wrap this up. I wish we could keep going here, but we have some amazing guests coming up over the next couple of months. It's really, really going to be some, I think, really interesting conversation in context of our new show name. Like I said, it will probably take us 30 days or so to get through all the logistics of this and new images and all of that. If I mistake and call it socialselling2.0, brandon, don't kill me, we'll correct you.
Speaker 3:There's no killing, there's just slapping.
Speaker 2:All right, it's pitch slapping. That's fine, I'm good, all right, wonderful, awesome comments today. Thank you for everybody for joining us this year. Happy New Year to everybody, brandon Carson. Any final words before we sign off.
Speaker 3:Bring it home Carson.
Speaker 4:Until next time, happy, modern selling yes.
Speaker 2:Well done.
Speaker 3:That's it.
Speaker 2:Bye everybody. Hey, tom Burton here and I wanted to personally thank you for listening or watching today's episode of SocialSelling2.0. If you enjoyed or found value in today's show, please share with your friends and colleagues. Also, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast outlet. And please also subscribe to our YouTube channel and join our free online community at socialselling2.0.com. There you'll get free access to the latest social selling resources training sessions, webinars and can collaborate with other social selling professionals. Thank you again for listening and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.