In this episode, we are joined by Kevin Brown from LeadSmart Technologies. We begin with a reflective journey that takes us from Kevin's early experiences to the modern sales environment influenced by AI, social media, and a customer-focused approach. We discuss LinkedIn's transformation into a vital tool for sales and share interesting anecdotes from his professional history. Kevin provides valuable advice aimed at improving engagement and attracting potential clients, especially at trade shows.
We also address the challenges of transitioning from a passive online presence to an active, impactful one in social selling. We also delve into the complexities of expanding networks, crafting appropriate messages, and overcoming self-doubt.
As we conclude, we focus on the significance of building relationships in sales. We discuss ways to position yourself as a trusted advisor in your industry and how to nurture genuine connections that lead to business opportunities. Kevin shares his experiences with successful internal networking and educational sales methods. We also address key questions on prioritizing activities to create a cascading effect in sales results.
This episode is packed with practical advice and strategies for using LinkedIn effectively, expanding your network through live engagements, and becoming an appealing brand for your target audience.
In this episode, we are joined by Kevin Brown from LeadSmart Technologies. We begin with a reflective journey that takes us from Kevin's early experiences to the modern sales environment influenced by AI, social media, and a customer-focused approach. We discuss LinkedIn's transformation into a vital tool for sales and share interesting anecdotes from his professional history. Kevin provides valuable advice aimed at improving engagement and attracting potential clients, especially at trade shows.
We also address the challenges of transitioning from a passive online presence to an active, impactful one in social selling. We also delve into the complexities of expanding networks, crafting appropriate messages, and overcoming self-doubt.
As we conclude, we focus on the significance of building relationships in sales. We discuss ways to position yourself as a trusted advisor in your industry and how to nurture genuine connections that lead to business opportunities. Kevin shares his experiences with successful internal networking and educational sales methods. We also address key questions on prioritizing activities to create a cascading effect in sales results.
This episode is packed with practical advice and strategies for using LinkedIn effectively, expanding your network through live engagements, and becoming an appealing brand for your target audience.
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:Gentlemen, welcome to episode number 69, mastering Social God. Mastering Modern Right now great.
Speaker 3:So happy to be here. I told you I'm the worst moderator.
Speaker 2:ever when I come to this name, I also don't want to get in trouble. So, mastering Modern. So, brandon, what's the tagline? Because I'll just muff it if I try.
Speaker 4:It's Relationship, social and AI and a buyer-centric era. That's right. That's what we're talking about.
Speaker 3:I thought this was the DeLorean owners group of North America, wow. We can do that.
Speaker 4:We've been chatting with.
Speaker 5:DeLorean before. It's been a while, but we had somebody in my hometown that had a DeLorean and I was able to take that in once. I did not get it up to 88 miles per hour and I did not see Brandon Lee in the lunchroom.
Speaker 3:Yeah well, I caught a LinkedIn post this morning about Back to the Future and had that whole DeLorean thing going Same.
Speaker 5:And I had Leah Thompson sing me Happy Birthday last year. So I mean we just have a lot of Back to the Future connections in the school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to help you Bryn Well speaking about, back to the Future, our guest today, kevin Brown, I have known for 55 years.
Speaker 5:Not to be confused with the former pitcher for the Texas Rangers.
Speaker 2:No, that is the former pitcher. He'll tell you the story here in a minute. That's why I had to go to physical therapy in a minute.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I thought you were going to say he's Doc Brown and he just goes by Kevin Brown.
Speaker 2:That could be true, that's a good one too. So anyway, I'm Tom Burton. I'm here with my co-host, brandon Lee, and Carson Heddy. Before we get into Kevin and his introduction, brandon, this show is now being sponsored by Fist Bump. Why don't you just take 30 seconds or so and tell us a little bit about what's up with Fist Bump?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So Fist Bump started out as a commenting SaaS tool and it still provides up for people. You want to make commenting on influencers or your industry's key posts as part of a regular cadence. Fist Bump's a great tool for that. Keep you consistent, documents your work puts it in CRM so you can show the boss that you're doing your work. But then we've also moved into a lot of services, a lot of dumb for you services. We call them our concierge services. I know Kevin hates the word concierge, but we call them concierge services. They're helping leaders and teams leverage their LinkedIn activities, create content, comment regularly all for very specific purposes, like creating qualified pipeline, driving lots of traffic to trade show booths. That's a huge success with doing some things around events. So, anybody, you got an event, you got a big conference coming up. You're not sure how you're going to turn qualified pipeline. We have a really, really great solution for it right now and our testimonials are unbelievable and happy to share data.
Speaker 2:All right, awesome. So Butch is happy that we're getting the movie references out of the way early. Oh man.
Speaker 3:Wait, wait, wait. Do you guys still do dead jokes? Because I totally forgot to prepare that.
Speaker 2:No, that's so. We killed that that's so 2023.
Speaker 4:I said we just learned that Kevin hasn't watched our show in at least six to eight months. That's right.
Speaker 3:No, that's not true. I might have it on 1.5 speed.
Speaker 2:It doesn't mean they haven't watched, then it's thinking we're doing dad jokes.
Speaker 3:You know, somebody's got to run the ship when time's doing this show.
Speaker 5:You listen at one and a half speed. I've noticed we get to the point a lot quicker.
Speaker 2:Yes, and Bob will often make it tell.
Speaker 4:And even then it takes a while.
Speaker 2:Right so so, bob, welcome, and if you're online, jump in. Let us know that you're here, where you're at, if you're staying warm. So, kevin, our show. Today we're going to talk about awkward moment.
Speaker 4:Thank you for calling it out, Chris.
Speaker 2:We thought we were going to slip right by it. Not one bit. So we're going to talk a bit with Kevin today. Kevin's been in sales his whole career, just to kind of get every, so it's not confusing. Kevin is my business partner in Leedsmart Technologies. Kevin, we'll talk about what that is here in just a minute. We have been friends since kindergarten, so we've known each other six, seven years and we also have another show together live show that we do call around the horn. So just that all of those kind of pieces start to fit together. That's kind of how we work together. But, kevin, why don't we start off? Just tell a little bit about your background and then we're going to get into kind of how you've progressed over the years into more modern selling, linkedin, using LinkedIn, and kind of dig in on some of the successes you've had with it.
Speaker 3:Sure Well, first, thanks for having me. Gentlemen, I'm appreciative of that and, much to the chagrin of the awkward moment, I do listen. I just kept it in pieces and it's not as much, and you don't need the backpedal.
Speaker 2:It's okay, I'm not backpedaling one bit.
Speaker 3:You know, tom and I work together and when Tom is here on doing this, someone needs to drive the ship right, so I'm rarely live and I'm typically catching the recordings. I also have an opportunity to talk with Brandon and Tom regularly about the topics that are going on here. So again, I'm Kevin Brown, born and raised Southern California. As Tom mentioned earlier, I've known Tom literally we've known each other since kindergarten. Tom's got a milestone birthday coming up next week, so I would never be the one that would say how long that's been, but it's been a long time.
Speaker 3:Something that I always describe it to people in business is that when we graduated high school, tom was smart and Tom went to University of California, santa Barbara. I was destined for community college where I spent two years. When I got there I thought I wanted to be a general contractor. When I left I knew I wanted to study business and transfer to university from there and study business throughout that time. But latter part of college I got involved and became a reserve firefighter here in Orange County, california, where I live. I worked for the Orange County Fire Authority for about seven, eight years as a reserve firefighter, so I took about two years before I got my full career started and I was teaching emergency management stuff and EMT classes and stuff like that. But it was my first taste of business because I did that on a contract basis. But I went to work. My first large or first real corporate type job was for a large national wholesale distributor of industrial safety and first aid equipment. I didn't start in sales. I started in the training department and then I moved into a BD kind of national accounts role there for three years literally. Tom and I were talking about this the other day with one of the guys that works with us at Leedsmart. My first laptop I paid for myself because the company barely barely had a green screen type computer system to run our 70 offices across the country. I paid for my first laptop. I think it was $2,800 and weighed about half of what my car weighs now. So I've always been the reason I say that is kind of always try to stay on the forefront of technology.
Speaker 3:Left started a manufacturer's rep agency, so now I was representing and the team that I built organizations like DuPont, very large companies managing sales, marketing, distribution in the Western United States. So I just saw this thing come in. Tom, I just got a text message from somebody as well that wasn't able to get in on the show. So I don't know if you guys have a way to double check that we're streaming properly, but my lovely wife was trying to join and she wasn't able to get in. Cutting to the chase right Started as a worker for a big distributor manufacturer's rep agency, 10 years sold my agency, invested in a manufacturing company. My entire career struggled for technology. That was centered on my business and what I did in distribution. About four years ago Tom and I got together and started Leedsmart Technologies. That's kind of my background Ever been a technology guy and now I'm the CEO of a technology company. But I run that kind of SME side of things in the industry side and Tom runs the technology side.
Speaker 4:Thanks, Kevin.
Speaker 3:We can't hear. Tom, tom, we can't hear you, you guys, ever encourage him to fix his mic.
Speaker 5:We do. We're trying to drum up some budget, but Leah Thompson broke the bank, so we're back to ground zero.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Brandon's contract took a lot too, so we don't have a lot of.
Speaker 5:That was a long negotiation.
Speaker 3:Maybe up in the cost for the fist bump sponsorship yeah.
Speaker 4:Hey, I want to address Jessica and then Darlene, if she's having an issue. I see it live on both our mastering social selling page and also I see it live on my page. If you go to either one of those, you should find it. I think part of the challenge might be we changed the name of our page from socialselling2.0 to mastering modern selling, and so maybe that was it the cost of glitch, but it's not going to be a problem for anybody who's experiencing that Cool Darlene.
Speaker 5:Thanks, darlene.
Speaker 4:I know that change caused some problems right, yeah, I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 2:But let's go do this. Didn't know how, but one little name change could cause so many problems. I didn't either.
Speaker 3:Well, it magnifies the size of the audience and the value that you guys are bringing right.
Speaker 2:There we go. So, kevin, as you talked about back in the day, you weren't exactly using LinkedIn. You were using phone booths and running from things to airport to airport and stuff. Where did you kind of? At what point? When did you start to get involved with LinkedIn and use that as part of the sales strategy, and why?
Speaker 3:So I went back and looked. The answer to your question is September 7th. 2006 is when I started my account. I think they started in 2005. You guys may know better, so about right and so fairly early. I know there's a way you can go back and look what number you would come in at. I'm sure it's in the tens of thousands, but it was pretty good early on. To your point, tom, I started my career and I tried to consistently have technology at the forefront of what I was doing, and the industry that I was working in is still digitally transforming. But I did that. What you described. Right, I could tell you about where every pay phone was between the Mexican border and the Oregon border, which is kind of some of the territories my first company covered and was the guy that stopped in at the hotel with the phone banks in it to make my calls and was an early adopter of cell phones. I had the one in the bag first and then the big brick one and I'm consistently gone with that and I've been working in. I'll just kind of tell you my quick piece of my journey is 2006, when I got started, to 2009-ish 2010. I used it but I didn't have a plan. You know I was where most people are at. Still, I would say, is I went on, I looked, probably was more of a snooper than a poster. I wasn't concerned about my network.
Speaker 3:In 2009, at kind of the middle of the economic downturn, the manufacturing company that I had invested in was having some struggles, and it was the right time for me to kind of step out and look to do something next, and I wasn't sure what that was. My wife, darnene that's here, has run a very successful design, marketing and printing company for many, many years, and I had already office out of her offices here in Orange County, california, and so we decided that maybe I should see if I could dip my toes into helping her grow her business, and I was starting to use LinkedIn a little bit more than while I was looking to kind of figure out how to try and invent myself. What we realized very quickly was that I wasn't good at her business, and she was really good, and what got her there and had her success did not need any of my suggestions, and so it was better for me to go find something else to do. Well, what better time than to really embrace developing a strong network that turned into quite a bit of consulting work.
Speaker 3:I won't say the number, but it's a very attractive mid six figure number that I can. 110% relate specifically to consulting work that came out of LinkedIn relationships. So that's what kind of got me moving and then I've kind of progressed along the way and I'm talking a lot here. So is that kind of what you're looking for?
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I'd say to Kevin what I want to get into the meat of this, because I've been telling people that this is going to be a great show Very practical and very tactical, because what you're doing between you, as Kevin, and what you and Tom do with around the horn is what I would say is really good modern selling. So I'd love to hear what you're doing with LinkedIn, like, specifically, how are you leveraging LinkedIn? First is Kevin, and then we can talk about the show.
Speaker 3:Fantastic. So I think the first thing I'd want to share with your audience is I have a lot of the same struggles that they do. Everybody's crazy busy. I put in a lot of time to it, but I don't know that I always maximize my time. But I'm getting significantly better and, frankly, I have learned quite a bit from this podcast that your guys show.
Speaker 3:And so what I've had to do? Very significantly because, historically, I was just building out a network in a very specific area that was much narrower than I want it to be now. So I had to recognize and understand I had to move outside of that comfort zone. As you can tell from our discussion, I'm not afraid to talk, but I still sometimes struggle to push the record button and have the confidence to post it. Now Tom and I have a podcast that's successful. Do it every week, not uncomfortable with these things, but I've been working through those things.
Speaker 3:So I think an answer to your question is I've had to put a cadence in place, identify and clarify how I'm expanding my marketplace of the people that I want, and then find what that right not just cadence, rhythm is, but also what is my message to them.
Speaker 3:And you guys use consistently the phrase, the pitch, lap phrase and this whole thing. My big takeaway, what I've needed to do, is to find a way out how to put some mechanics to my LinkedIn relationship and all my social relationships while staying extremely authentic, and that's been because I had valued so much that the cure, I would say. I curated my LinkedIn relationships up until about a year ago much more tightly than I do now I was now. I asked you that brand and we finally, after four or five days of trying to catch each other, spoke this morning briefly and we were talking about numbers. I'd never looked at numbers, I looked at who will. Now what I've done in the last six months or so is widened out into markets and into groups of people that are specifically relevant to the company that Tom and I run. But what I did is have been consistently working and kind of testing some messaging, and I think I've just recently arrived on my just right messaging.
Speaker 5:I had written down here to ask what was it like pitching in the same rotation with Nolan Ryan, but yeah, I realized wrong, kevin Brown. Kevin Brown, you think I'd be here, kevin. I feel like we're kindred spirits because, you know, being lifelong sales guys that have found themselves in prominent roles in technology really strikes a chord with me, and I'm actually in the process right now of writing my fifth book. To your point, I've learned a ton from this show, and one of the big elements that I always try to profess to others is I don't purport to be an expert here.
Speaker 5:Yep, I hear you saying is that you've tried a lot of things, and I think that's what I try to encourage people to do is Go out and look for when is your audience? What are the different ways that I can engage, but be willing to try Just to got anything that isn't a pitch lap in order to meaningfully connect with folks? What have you seen Work and maybe not work but that you've learned from and maybe tweaked? What have been some of the most valuable steps that you've taken in your LinkedIn journey from lurker to learner?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'll thank you for the compliment. I want to share something is this was, I think, from one of your guys very early shows something, and this is my first chance to meet Carson here today which is really cool around the horn fan.
Speaker 3:Okay, thank you, tell your friends the tell your friends that are in wholesale distribution and manufacturing. But you know one of the things that I learned, it was a huge takeaway for me with what you guys do here and I think I'm pretty, almost positive Carson it was you that was talking about it was Influencing a large portion of an organization right now I'm approaching 60 years old, I've got a CEO title.
Speaker 3:I've had one before. It's been years and years and years. I've always had a senior executive title. I can touch people at a very high level. It's pretty common that people will accept my request Because of who I already know and or title. In my experience that's not the same for everybody, right.
Speaker 3:But what I recognize I hadn't been doing and it was a great takeaway from from you guys here is I Wasn't broadening out into the organization enough. And what I recognized and learned and I'm doing that now is and you know, I had a conversation this morning with a CEO of a huge target customer of ours right, great people there, but I know the CEO Well. The CEO is not making the decisions. He's got the right people in place and so broadening out a big takeaway for me and I've been doing it dramatically better for the last Right nine to nine to twelve months is moving wider in the organization. So while I'm a CEO of a SaaS software company, knowing the field sales guy or the customer service rep in Ireland is Valuable to me because eventually my name and my most importantly, my company's name is going to move through that organization ideally, and Everybody having heard of us is very valuable. Now is a great takeaway from this show for me, as is doing that, because historically I've been look, look at me, look at you know my career and I want to be connected to just these people, so I've brought that out a lot Early on.
Speaker 3:What I wasn't doing was and I need to do much, much, much more of this, but I've not been posting enough video content. But when I do, it's extremely well received. I still have that. I think it's imposter syndrome, I guess it is. You know, I wish that I had the confidence that I see in in Brandon with the videos that he makes. I make them, but not as consistently, so I'm trying to work on my cadence with those. I've dipped my toes into tic-tac, which is abysmal with the amount I've accomplished there so far, but that's kind of helping as well. Before I go on, anything from you guys or and I'll kind of tell you where I'm at today, if that's helpful, I think this is great.
Speaker 5:I mean you hit on a few really poignant topics, kevin, specifically around just the different mediums that you're trying. I don't we don't talk about imposter syndrome on this show a ton either and I will tell you I'm a big sufferer of it, especially being a sales guy that on paper, has no business being in the company that I'm in, but I've managed to find success by doing Exactly what you just articulated. It's earning that right to be the trusted advisor and creating that groundswell of influence we talk a lot on this show about that, those layers of probability and propensity.
Speaker 5:And if you've got that relationship and you know your strength in your wheelhouse and you know you can get that C level relationship by doing that outreach first and foremost, how can you parlay that? How can that be the first domino to fall? How can you get that C level to introduce you to those other movers and shakers and influencers? And I always tell my team to you may have one or two or five or ten target C levels that you want to go after in One organization. You may completely strike out, you may go over the room.
Speaker 5:But if you go 10x that and you reach out to their VP influencers, you reach out to senior directors. Eventually you're gonna find that domino to fall and that is the key. So I love that you articulated some of those key points. I joined tiktok to to my oldest daughter, chagrin yeah, but haven't done a ton out there yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I struggled with trying to hide behind having it be a persona on tiktok. Ie Leedsmart CEO as opposed to me. There's a couple reasons. One, I really wanted to separate that persona from my personal life and, and I know there's all kinds of research and and, certainly, algorithms that would suggest you want to bring those together. I like to kind of keep those things separate where we're possible. And it was funny because I think like that, you know, literally, I was, you know, at Bible study on a Thursday night, like a week after, and all I had done was I posted some clips from, or shorts from, our podcast into tiktok. And you know this, this guy at Bible study was like man, I've been watching your tiktoks. I'm like, ah, come on, not one year. One, you're not a buyer, right, you're a landscaping contractor, and and and. Two, it's like that's not where I wanted to be, but I'm trying to kind of get get over that and it's just who I am and what I do.
Speaker 5:So that's been, and that's it.
Speaker 4:And that's one of the things I like about I mean, I think this whole modern selling approach that I, that I we've learned is Taking things like our live show and turning it into shorts and then using those shorts To have this omnipresence right, these 30 second to two minute clips that we can publish to Instagram reels and to tiktok and and republish into LinkedIn because not everybody can spend an hour Watching our live show but creating those clips and then for us using those to Stay relevant and stay in front of people, because it is hard to create content every single day.
Speaker 4:But I think that that what I'm seeing with, like some of our clients and what we do for ourselves, is that show style content, interview style content, is really highly consumed compared to a lot of other content right now, especially if you use clips and put them into paid campaigns, because it's different than all the stuff that buyers are getting bombarded with in ads, which is buy my product, download this, this PDF, like all that what I call old school digital selling you know, five, six years ago.
Speaker 3:So using that that show style, their interview style clips is such a huge part of a modern selling strategy and system yeah, so before we jump on, I wanted to add something to build on that, and we've been doing a great job of talking to three of us and not having allowing Tom to jump in here, which is awesome, but we'll get in here just a second.
Speaker 3:I wanted to key on something, if I can, that you said, brandon from that standpoint right is in it I trigger from this discussion about moving into multiple places right and and there's a way right, with the right strategy, that you can do this where you can be buying ads and still be staying extremely authentic, right and so that I think is extremely valuable without trying to sell something. But what really catches me and it's from the just the comment you made earlier about you know what you guys are able to do at fist bump with some of your customers and helping them at trade shows and so forth probably my biggest success right now with what I'm trying to do in broadening my network socially is also being live at events and I cannot tell you and we do. You know we're partnered with some major national and international, both buying groups and trade associations. We sell our, our solution right into wholesale distribution and manufacture. So I'm at a lot of these events and and I can't tell you the amount of people that come up that say watch the podcast.
Speaker 3:I've never heard these people. I have not even heard of their company, right, but they know who I am and they know that I'm a co-host of a podcast that is for their business and we stand out from every other vendor that's there at that moment, right. So that's. I like to look at it as this mix.
Speaker 3:And we talk about omnipresence so often is and we talk about it digitally, but I think there's a component of omnipresence that, if you can do it to have a live presence with a social presence, brings all those things together because the true person yeah, I, I know what Carson looks like, but I've never had dinner with him or talked with him over a beer. Right, I've done that with you and Tom, but I've never been able to do that with Carson. I don't know Carson the same way that I know him through a social activity or even being live on an event together. And whether you call it belly to belly, selling or whatever it is, or not even selling, but relationship building, I believe that whenever you can input that personal piece, all the better.
Speaker 5:Nothing's ever gonna replace the live face-to-face. But what's great, gavin, is that you can build that brand recognition and that credibility right through commenting on posts and through live shows. I went to an event last month and it was a global partner event and what's incredible to me is like I'm a nobody. I'm just a small-town kid from the Midwest US and I walk into this thing and everybody's like books well, yeah, but thanks for calling bullshit on that.
Speaker 5:It's very nice, right, it's a niche and my point is, like these people knew who I was because of different webinars that I've been at earlier shows, and what's incredible to me is the conversation starters. It's like you feel like you know someone, so that when that meeting finally happens, it's like we're not starting from ground zero, and that's gonna the beauty of being able to leverage these digital tools. Leading up to that point, brandon, what were you gonna say?
Speaker 4:no, I was, you know, chris, chris Dunn, who was on here earlier, who said the awkward moment, you know, he shared with me a message he got on one day and of somebody that said, send him a message. I connected with him and said, oh man, chris, I feel like I know you because and he referenced one of his posts and it was a post that he I think it was talking about him and his daughter and he, you know, talked about business. But he came from the position of there's a picture of my daughter and I and then used it about business. But the person reached out to him and said you know, I feel like I know you because of your post and what you guys are saying is that, carson, you say this and I borrowed it. I use it all the time.
Speaker 4:Whatever you can do to give you a higher probability of success, when you're going to that show or conference or meeting or whatever it is, and you have a consistent social presence, you're commenting on other people's posts so they see you there. You're creating content. A lot of people are engaging with your content. Maybe you have a show or you do videos. People come up to you and go. I know you like we?
Speaker 4:We on boarded a new client yesterday and this is the way we met. I was at parents weekend for our daughter, abby, at Samford University and I had somebody came up and chatted me on the shoulder and goes you're Brandon Lee, right? And I said yeah, we're connected, we're connected on LinkedIn and I watch your show. I said, oh, thank you, awesome, we meet, we schedule a coffee, we schedule a follow-up meeting. We on boarded his company yesterday. That's the value of modern selling. But we got to think about it. It's not spray and pray, it's not how many people can you pound with the pitch slab. It's this omnipresence and putting that content out there and becoming known, building a reputation it.
Speaker 5:Sometimes I silly things on this show to get you know a laugh. But I kid you not. When I was in Seattle last I literally had three people come up to me and say you do a show with Brandon Lee on yeah, and I, and I think the person that your daughter's thing was, aren't you the Brandon Lee from back to the future fame?
Speaker 2:and you kind of made it easier. Yeah, I want to hit a couple comments and questions before me please do so.
Speaker 2:First, I wanted to hit Jessica and what she was saying is you know, she said I love talking to everyone in the company, gives me a much bigger picture of how the whole organization operates and allows me to earn brownie points when I can be the one to bring the needs of the engineers to have their C-suite. And you know, kevin, that's what you were talking about. But when you talk about the aspect of the content and we're gonna talk more about the show in a minute right is more and more people in that organization have consumed that content and know us or know like and trust us through that content. Yep, just really makes things a lot easier.
Speaker 3:Well, there's a lot of influencers in the organization, so to that point, tom, it was what was I was triggering off of as Brandon was describing things right. Brandon just described on boarding a new customer that he didn't sell. You need to. It wasn't selling, it was. I created value. Somebody participated in the value that I was creating, saw that I was a reputable person of integrity and said we should talk further.
Speaker 3:Yep, and, and I think and I don't know if this fits perfectly congruently with the purpose of this, your show but in my mind I've always looked at myself and Tom, you introduced me, as you know a lifelong sales guy. I've never had the title of a salesperson. I've had a BD, business development roles. I've had other titles. I've always looked at myself as a relationship person that can, with whatever the methodology is of developing relationships will tie to business. I've been extremely fortunate. You know I'm approaching 60 years of I've.
Speaker 3:I've been an owner in or owned four companies over the years. I've been to court twice and I've probably done only had to do business less than 10 times of people I truly didn't like over my entire career. But I think we get wrapped up sometimes in selling, selling, selling and, if we can develop the relationship correctly and in this case, as we're describing today, move ourselves throughout the other parts of an organization. We just become the trusted advisor that says we have to talk to these people first and now. We're not selling, we're informing, educating and coaching to help people make a decision that eliminates the selling. So I almost think, I think you know changing the name of your podcast is in my view, this is one guy's opinion is great, because I think it's less about selling and it's more about developing relationships and adding value.
Speaker 5:I love that and if you do it right, you create this foundation or this groundwork that just keeps feeding itself. You just said something really important, kevin, because a lot of what we're doing is educating. I can't tell you how many times that I just blindly, selflessly, sent a lead that I couldn't handle to my competitor or to my peer or colleague in the industry who could take it without any, you know, expectation of reciprocity. But yet they sent me a lead down the road, and so I was like I'm going to be a big winner. We got a nice big win recently and somebody reached out to me and was like how did you get this? And we didn't know at first.
Speaker 5:And so we did research and found out that they were going to these webinars, every webinar that we did, and they were set up to really just passively educate all of our customers at scale. They were at every webinar and that's why they bought. They reached out to one of our digital teams, signed up, but that's why it happened. So you almost create this mechanism by which you can engage, meaningfully, educate, and if you keep investing in these engines, there's no silver bullet. But if you invest in all of them and don't discriminate against any way to create a meaningful relationship and become a trusted advisor. It'll pay off.
Speaker 4:Hey, kevin, I know Raj has a question in the comments. I think, yeah, what you know, a specific cadence into how the average sales guy could prioritize the dominoes that fall after the first. I think that's huge. Thanks for that question, raj. I wanted today to be really practical for people like this, because that's what you know, that's what you've been doing, that's what Carson does, that's what I do. We go in and we figure things out and we try it, we test and then we evolve. But, kevin, I'd love for you to answer that.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll ask you guys to keep me on track because I'm not sure I perfectly understand the dominoes that fall after the first, but I assume that's as we start building our relationships within our organization. And, in all honesty and frankness, frank Mr Raj on this is, I don't have the perfect cadence developed yet. I know I set aside specific time each day that I'm going to work on these and sometimes it I find myself on LinkedIn developing relationships when I actually should be completing my to-do list and my just talking. I like to talk about my 10X activities versus you know one or two X activities, because it's easy to get stuck on LinkedIn and or other social tools. Right, nothing's worse than when you get into putting up reels or different things on TikTok and other things and now there's, you know, oh, look at this wine tasting video. And then there's this you know how to cook the perfect steak video and those things that get in the way. But I like to look at that as I have a caution in answer for myself.
Speaker 3:In answering Nourage's questions, I don't like to go try and hit everybody at once in an organization, because that can look less than authentic if some were more to peel that onion a little bit, which they could, but I do that methodically from a senior level.
Speaker 3:So I'll just give you an example. The people within an ICP that I'm working with are CEOs, slash owners, senior executives, and it probably stops at the national sales manager, senior marketing people and then the other groups that we may connect with are less involved in decision making, so I kind of prioritize them a little bit less. So I have a mix of just knowing in my head what I'm going to do and how I'm going to prioritize them. But I'm also starting to do some of that. I've been playing again with navigator. I've never been a hugely successful that and it's not navigator's fault, it's mostly me. But I have in my mind I want to catch CEO or owner senior executives that can make decisions and then I want to start dropping in all of those other so-called influencers in organizations as a cadence, and I typically would do that over a series of weeks, not days.
Speaker 5:And I want a brief comment on that. I think that's really an astute observation, kevin. I think, naraj what it comes down to, you know it's the beginning of the year for many. You know my fiscal year runs July to June, but I spent a lot of time at the end of one year, in the beginning of the next, studying what worked last year and what didn't. What do I need to really double down on? What do I need to jettison or tweak? But also, going into the new year, what are the relationships that I'm going to need in order to be successful this year, to hit my goals, hit my targets? Are there metrics or solution areas where I really need to double down? So I think it depends on what are you ultimately trying to achieve?
Speaker 5:And if you were really to list out in an organization, what are the top five, 10 executive relationships that you need? What's it going to take to go out and get those and, knowing that you're not necessarily going to get the CFO or the CHRO or the chief marketing officer, chief strategy officer, to reply right out of the gate, being able to kind of build a swarm around some of the other executives that would be the influencers of influencers. Now, what I've found works is you're going to have some cadences and silos, but there is sometimes a goal of marrying that up. I keep some of these in silos and in pockets for a while as I'm kind of nurturing them and understanding what are some projects that we might be able to do together. But then when I talk to kind of my main stakeholder, I will kind of read them in. I will make sure that they know hey, we're working on this with this person, we're working on this with this person so that they know we're entrenched.
Speaker 5:Are there any other folks that I should be meeting? You know, allow your dominoes to knock down some dominoes for you. They're going to bring you into some of these relationships. Plug you in. You've got a heck of a lot higher probability of getting a meeting if the CEO or the C-suite makes that introduction for you, as opposed to blindly reaching out on LinkedIn. I have done a big mix of both, but I will tell you that the most successful, the biggest deal I've ever done the nine figure deal that I talked to Tom about, and that's how Tom and I really got connected was it started out by reaching out to a lot of C-levels and a lot of VP levels and separate silos. What ended up happening is we wound up having a bi-weekly cadence where we would go through a list of about 30 priorities, one by one, by one, and we had all of their executives on, so that we were in lockstep. That is a vision, that is a goal, but to Kevin's point, it takes time.
Speaker 3:So let me, if I can I would like to key in on that just a second.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, tom and Brandon, to just dive in on that, but I have a thought and I want to get because of what you're doing well, all of you guys are doing, but I think a lot of what Carson is doing, what I'm doing, are real similar I would throw out to people and I think this probably adds a little bit into Mirage's question is probably start at the level you're at in your organization within LinkedIn, right, because if you're a manager or director and you're connecting in at your target accounts with your peers, you're probably more likely to get that connection request accepted than if you're a manager and you go to that customer CEO first.
Speaker 3:Not saying this is absolute, but something to consider. I know in my setting being an executive, when I connect with an executive, a national sales manager, a marketing manager is much more likely to connect with me. But I think that goes up and down right. If you're a director level person and you're connecting with four director level people and then you go hit the VP of that department, whatever it might be that you want to connect with, and you're already connected with four of their subordinates. They're much more likely to engage with you. But I think there's a value in starting maybe one level above or one level below or at your level, versus always reaching for the stars if you're not in an executive level.
Speaker 5:And if you go higher. I think it's important to make sure that you explain why. Jessica, you made a great comment in the chat about why are we so averse to saying we're in sales? Because I don't like to say that either.
Speaker 5:I never reach out to an executive and say that I'm in sales.
Speaker 5:I usually explain that I'm the steward of the relationship or that I'm their customer evangelist or whatever the case may be, and I do have a senior title.
Speaker 5:But my point is like I don't have a CEO title, but I've absolutely reached out to CEOs because I get paid to own the all-of-relationship with that customer organization. You can flip it on its head and when I show up, I take a counterintuitive approach. A lot of customers will say, hey, we're already buying stuff from you, or you guys only show up when it's renewal time or you want our money, and so I'll flip that on its head and reach out to say, hey, it's my job to make sure that you're aware of all the resources that you're entitled to because of your significant investment. And I have the ability to bring in other executive stakeholders to represent our organization and work closely and partner with them. That's the value that I can bring. I don't ever bring up sales to your point, but I think that's the key element is you've got to present yourself as a steward of the relationship. That's what helps you get in the door.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I've got something to add? Go ahead, Brandon. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4:Well, I was just saying. I have a question for you guys. When you talk about these first dominoes and reaching out, are you referring specifically to sending connection requests or are you talking about other activities alongside it?
Speaker 3:I was looking at it from a kind of getting started and then what's next? Standpoint, which I wasn't sure if that's what Naraj was asking about, I think how we get in and I think this will tie in a little bit to we kind of wanted to talk about, you know, your podcast and our podcast opens some doors and I think there's a whole great level of discussion of how we get in somewhere. And back to you know, jessica's question is I'm not opposed to saying somebody's a salesperson. Sales is a noble profession. I think people get a little nervous because people get there's a connotation. You know it's not quite lawyer, but sometimes there's a connotation of it. And if you're proud of it, absolutely I just look at it as if I'm doing a great job of relationship building and understanding their organization.
Speaker 3:There's less selling involved. And, to Carson's point, it doesn't need to talk about selling right? Somebody tapped you on the shoulder at your daughter's event, brandon, because you were providing value to their organization. Maybe you needed to sell something along the way, but it's less. I have to take you through a sandal or selling or some selling process. There's less of that. It could still be a value depending on how you go to market, but there's less importance to that when you've developed a relationship that's respectful and authentic.
Speaker 5:Bob, you just made a mic drop comment. This big problem of C-suite conversations is lack of business acumen. Thinking to CXO, and you are spot on. I think there is this fear or this lack of comfort in extending the muscle. You know it takes time to develop that muscle of being able to talk confidently with C-suite and, for whatever reason, I think there is kind of this stigma that a lot of sellers have where they don't, either don't want to do it or they show up and throw up and think that this C-level executive is just going to gravitate toward one of the many things that you think is great about your organization and that's not how it works. You know I've had C-level conversations where you know they gave me five minutes and I had an opportunity very quickly to say something poignant or astute that I found in their company earnings report or whatever it was to like. Earn my stay now stay off my execution. You've got to make sure you're very intentional in how you structure that conversation.
Speaker 2:So I want to hit on another topic before we have to wrap up here. You know Kevin mentioned right we have a show. We created a show for our industry called Around the Horn, I don't know a little over a year and a half ago, just a little bit before. We started this show. And you know, leeds Smart is a company. Our company has been around about four years and I'm not saying this because I'm necessarily proud of it, but we haven't spent a lot of money on marketing. In fact, we spent very little money on marketing and our entire sort of go-to-market strategy has revolved around what Kevin's talked about today using LinkedIn and building relationships. And then we decided to try and turbocharge it with the show and by using a live show.
Speaker 2:And I want to separate out for a minute live show on LinkedIn, like we're doing here in podcasts, because those can be two different animals. Really. They can one can go into the other, but they're not necessarily the same. We started off doing just a live show. We did not have a podcast. We did not turn it into a podcast, I think for six months or so before it was actually turned into a podcast.
Speaker 2:But what I want to state on this because I want to talk about the show part a minute here, right, leeds Smart with basically no other marketing other than what we've done on LinkedIn, we grew 100% over 100% in 2023. And at this point we'll probably grow 200% in 2024. If we just kept doing what we're doing, with what Kevin described today and I'd say that not to brag, I say that to really hammer home the power of using LinkedIn but then combining it with the live show and the content that can be repurposed going forward, because I know in our business you know Kevin tells me a lot man momentum's picking up, momentum's picking up I see a direct correlation between momentum and growth in the business and the show and the live show on there. So I wanted to kind of set the stage for that. And then you know, kevin, why don't you just take a second and tell, like how we kind of created the show and what it's done, and then even how that's really tied back to what you're doing and how you use it to build connections?
Speaker 3:Sure. So you're spot on. Now we kind of I want to add a couple of things to that. We started off in launching our live show. That then became a live show and podcast with some partnerships and I think partnerships are something we haven't talked about today. That are if you see an opportunity, this works, whether it's a you're in the local networking group and you're a realtor right, or you're a SaaS software company that's working with trade associations and buying groups like we are Microsoft and Carson's case, you know probably partnered and supporting and sponsoring events and things like that everywhere.
Speaker 3:So we started with a little bit of a foothold because of one my 30 years of background in the marketplace that we started with. So we started with my LinkedIn network, which at the time I wish was larger, and then some lists that I already had of some people that we could email market to. But then we started leveraging the LinkedIn and the social side of it, as we've talked about. But then these trade associations and buying groups that we worked with helped feed some of the professionalism that we brought and a little bit of credibility, and the reason I describe it is you can find this for your business in lots of different ways, and so what's happened for us is I mentioned this earlier now I'll go to one of these trade shows you know, they're really typically buying group conferences where we'll have a table and meeting set up with people, and or I'll be at the cocktail reception and I'll be wearing a late smart technology shirt or sweater or whatever it is, and people will come out of the woodwork that know who the show is, and so so much can be done with such a small budget, which is, I think, your point, tom. What I'd like to add to this, with what I've done and I've just been doing this for a few months now is we talk so consistently about being authentic the whole world is getting. If you're using LinkedIn, you're getting inundated with the pitch slaps, as you guys described them. Your inbox is full of hey just rolling this to the top of your inbox, or you know just, you know following up and all of those emails that are spammy, right, and we were trying to stay away from those things and they're not, because they're not bringing value. And so what I've recently started doing in the last series of months is I'm going out to our ICP, which is maybe part of one of the buying groups or trade associations that we're involved with, which gives us access to, say, 12, 1300 companies and all the people that go with that. But as I'm using this in LinkedIn is I'm going and saying to Carson Carson, Kevin Brown, we share some phenomenal contacts and friends on LinkedIn and I thought it would be nice to join each other's networks.
Speaker 3:I also am the cohost of a popular podcast called Around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution that I thought you might have an interest in wwwaroundthehornpodcom. Right Now there's a link there about something other than what I would ultimately like to sell them. There is value that has been brought to an introduction right off the bat, and I'm at now that it's probably 90, well over 90 percent of those introduction or LinkedIn requests come right back with a response. My trigger back to the question earlier about cadences is I wait three or four days and I then invite them to the following week's podcast. The following week I try and go back and invite them to like the Leedsmart Technologies LinkedIn page and now and then I'm intermixing the comments on their posts and the whole piece like that as well. So I also do quite a bit of and Brandon talks about this a lot where all, rather than just reaching out to them all, start following them and commenting on their posts and then make an introduction.
Speaker 3:I wanted to share this with you, really quick though is we're talking about using the podcast is not everybody can go do it. We've done it inexpensively, it's not a huge cost to get these things going, but the point would be that I would throw out to your audience would be about bringing finding something of value, and in my opinion, it's not I wrote a white paper, but it's I talk about these things and others in your marketplace have found value with them. I'm working on this right now.
Speaker 3:Darlene, who's on here, my lovely wife. She's doing that with her marketing, design and print organization, the company, about expanding her network. So we're trying to work on she's not going to start a podcast tomorrow, but what is it? The content that she has. That's different than the traditional cadence of I'm going to send him a white paper and then I'm going to gate it on my website and I'm going to do all of these things that everybody else does what can be authentic that I can bring to you early in our relationship. So Darlene and I are working through that right now in her business.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and I think even things that I like is like we use restream. I think you guys, you stream yard for your other show. You know these are inexpensive tools that you can go live. So you know, whether you're a sales rep, you're, you know, in a BD, whatever, you know bringing people on an interview with them or bringing them on and having a conversation and using these like $50 a month tools to go live Once a week or twice a month or something like that, that's bringing those conversations to the public.
Speaker 4:I mean, our show, or my first show, started because I was having lots of conversations with people that we realized, man, there's probably a lot of people that want to join us in these conversations. Turn on the camera and we started having these conversations and that's the value and it's, I believe, those are things that almost anybody can do. Yes, we got imposter syndrome. Yes, we got whatever shyness and do we need to get corporate approval to do some things like that? But if you want to be successful and you want to rise to the top, these are the things that we need to do, because it's the way we get attention and build reputation in this modern, modern world.
Speaker 3:It's branded. You're so, right, if you have a paid LinkedIn account which I would assume most people that join your show here do you can go live for free on your personal page, right? So, and that's what Tom had the idea when we got our podcast started, I wanted to do a newsletter because I get so many newsletters each week. So, as simple as that is, I said, let me just kind of taken and curate our own newsletter from what I'm reading, right? So we're not having to publish all kinds of content. And Tom's response is that's a great idea, because we have a large list to send it to. And he goes let's go live on LinkedIn, live one day and talk about it and see what happens. People showed up, yep, and we're what. There you go Friday. Tom is 73 or 74.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 74, I think.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it's all comes to podcasts, you know, if you build it, they will come. That's right.
Speaker 2:Apparently yeah, especially in Iowa.
Speaker 4:We got the movie reference. I write at the couldn't help it.
Speaker 5:Yeah, it didn't help it.
Speaker 2:So, kevin, I know you have to go because you have to go get some physical therapy on your throwing arms so that you can yeah, or my knee, yeah, yeah, sure.
Speaker 5:So, Brandon, I think your radius needs you back, so any final thoughts before we wrap here.
Speaker 4:I thought I got this was great. I would. I was really excited about for everybody is the practical side of it. I think you know love Kevin and Tom, but everybody they're not that special Like we're not that special, Carson and I aren't that special Like we turned on cameras, we started having conversations, you know we started using show, the, you know shorts and snippets of the show to send to people and man imposter syndrome. If that's getting in the way for a lot of these people, man, you got to figure out how to get over it because All kinds of doors start opening when you're, when you do this.
Speaker 2:All right, well, thanks for all the great comments, kevin. Thank you Good luck.
Speaker 3:Thanks for coming. You guys appreciate it.
Speaker 4:Thanks for coming, kevin. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Do you want to wrap us up?
Speaker 4:Absolutely Hold on real quick. I'm sorry, kevin, where do people find you, if they want to find you, and what time every week is around the horn?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the around the horn around the horn and wholesale distribution is live on YouTube live, facebook live and LinkedIn live at 9 am Pacific every Friday morning. We have an editor that takes all of that and by usually one or two in the afternoon. Friday it's on Spotify and the Apple podcast and all the podcast formats as well around the horn podcom. I'm very simple to contact K Brown at lead smart techcom and on LinkedIn I'm Kevin L Brown. There's there's quite a few, but not a very many of them are real active, like I am.
Speaker 2:Well, not everyone was a baseball star either, so that's All right. Thanks again everybody.
Speaker 3:Carson, yes, this is how we end, right. We end like this. I like the fish bomb.
Speaker 5:Until next time, everyone happy modern selling. Thanks everyone, hey.
Speaker 2:Tom Burton here and I wanted to personally thank you for listening or watching today's episode of social selling 2.0. 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 socialselling20.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.