The Importance of Creating Your Own Content
AI-Generated Transcript below. There may be errors.
Claire Davis 0:20
Hey, and welcome back to today's medical sales leader. I'm Claire Davis, your host, and I have someone who I just absolutely adore with me today. His name is Dan Motts. And he and I actually used to co produce a show called Power Hour last year. And that's where I learned about social selling. And you might be thinking, Well, gosh, Claire, what an obvious topic. Of course, selling should be social. But what really inspired me was how Dan does it. So I've asked him to be on the show today to kind of share with you the modern methods of what social selling is really all about, and how and why that's important to you in healthcare and medical sales. So Dan, thank you so much for joining me and welcome to the show.
Dan Mott 1:00
Thanks, Claire. I'm excited to be here. This is our 100th episode that we're like new to your show. But we've made a lot of content together. So I'm always happy to hang out and help out.
Claire Davis 1:16
Awesome. Well, I'm, I'm so glad to see what you're doing. I love the new show you've got going on not just another LinkedIn live because this
Dan Mott 1:25
episode sounds awesome today. And it went horribly. Well.
Claire Davis 1:31
Yes, it sounds tell us a little bit about the way that you dealt with the tech challenges today. I was really, I would love it how you went and rolled with the punches, despite your guests not being able to show up for 20 minutes.
Dan Mott 1:42
Yeah, so just another LinkedIn live is a LinkedIn live show. Every every weekday. That's pretty obvious. It's in the title. But I had Gabe Leal, who is a LinkedIn live expert on the show to talk about LinkedIn live strategy. So I was like, Oh, we're gonna really meta with today's episode, it's gonna be really cool. But we got even more meta than I thought, because I pinged him in the morning, I was like, here's the stream yard link to join me. And he's like, Cool. I'll be there in two minutes. And then he just didn't show up. And he just didn't show up. And we were getting ready to go live. And he just didn't show up. And I was like, Well, I guess I'm doing this on my own. I literally spent 20 minutes just like, it actually went pretty well. Because there was people in the comments showing up. So it was able to kind of like have a conversation with them. Talk about the problem and talk about how it related in a very meta way to Hey, this is a live show, this stuff happens. It comes up. And this is literally me live figuring it out how to handle it. And he showed up 20 minutes late because he was having technological issues, I was able to hang up for a little bit and had another technological issue and drops for like another 10 minutes in the middle of like him making a point about being prepared to go live, he drops out again.
Claire Davis 2:57
It was right when he was saying I've got this checklist that I use before I go live stream every time and then it just went dark.
Dan Mott 3:06
But it was awesome. Yeah, I had that like that. I think like the the 58 minute mark, the 59 minute mark right before I was about to go live. I had that like moment of sheer panic. And I was just like, No, you know what, you're fine. You've done this before you've got it. And I think just going in with that mindset definitely helped out a lot.
Claire Davis 3:22
So yeah, well, I mean, you certainly have the 10,000 hour rule under your belt, you know what you're talking about, you've got the reps in. So, of course, of course you flew through it. It's awesome. So well. So Dan here, he's, he's being honest. But he's a LinkedIn social selling specialist. And he helps people build better relationships that lead to more sales through his course. And I've taken his course and it was phenomenal. Because I think a lot of us look at what you know, we're doing here online, building a personal brand and reaching out to customers and making relationships in the DMS. But what I learned from Dan was a lot about looking at the data. So to back up and just kind of start at the beginning. Can you share with us a little bit about, you know, what is social selling? For anybody listening? Who's kind of like, okay, wait, tell me tell me more, but I'm not sure what we're talking about. So what is social selling?
Dan Mott 4:13
Awesome. So there's an experience that happens on LinkedIn that you're all very familiar with, and you just don't know what it is yet. And it's a phenomenon I refer to as pitch slapping. And it is literally when you get that connection request and you connect with that person and immediately they try and sell you their services. And this is not what social selling is. This is for whatever reason, when we're behind the the safety of insecurity of our screens, we kind of lose that human element. And I think that what happens with people is that when they don't know what else to say, they default to just pitching their services or products. So that's why we see a lot of this and really so like when I I've been in b2b Sales and Marketing for Are 1112 years now. And when I started my own business, despite having all that experience, I still was kind of like, I don't feel like I know what I'm doing. You know, it was like, how do I actually find customers? And how do I how do I? How do I start conversations? How do I find customers? How do I how do I do all these things and and I kept following the advice of people and found myself using automation tools and sending kind of blanket messages that I just never felt comfortable with. And I thought to myself, there has to be a better way that has to be in a better way. And I wanted to and all of my sales capacities throughout my entire career, the ones I always enjoyed the most were where I was actually getting the ability to build a relationship with someone where it wasn't just coming in and starting a conversation and trying to immediately sell them my product or service. But I was getting to know them trying to understand what they did, what they cared about, and what emotionally drilled drove them. Because emotions are heavily tied to the way that we make purchases. So by taking this approach of just being a human, just introducing ourselves, just starting a conversation, just getting to know people just building relationships, I discovered the art of LinkedIn social selling, it's just going out there being ourselves. And we can say that we can use LinkedIn as a marketing tool, or we can use it as a sales tool. But the end of the day, it's called social networking for a reason we're there to network. And we can do so in a very casual way, that is a lot more comfortable than just going out there and pitching people that allows us to connect with and sell to people. And that is what to me social selling is.
Claire Davis 6:33
Oh yeah, and I think it's interesting how even after you know, you're in an industry for 1015 20 years, we still have to be reminded to take the corporate hat off, and to speak like a human. And I've taken oodles of copywriting classes. And the first thing they teach you is you have to write like you speak. And none of us speaks like a robot, right? None of us go it goes in and says, Hey, Dan, I noticed that you might be experiencing this problem, would you be interested? Right? I mean, that's just not how we go about things. So I'm really encouraged to hear social selling, becoming more of a common, you know, theme here on LinkedIn. And I have to say that I'm seeing less pitch slaps in the DMS these days. Are you experiencing that? Or are you getting even more?
Dan Mott 7:22
I don't ever go away? I'm trying. It's yeah, it's a goal of mine to put an end to it. But I know that that's a frivolous goal. But I think working towards a trying to achieve that trying to educate people that, hey, there is a better way, something that you can feel better about doing and something that's actually going to get you better results. Like why would you not do that? I think by by kind of having that kind of you know, pie in the sky goal, having something to kind of look for that I know is never achievable. But doing that allows me to kind of create content at scale, and be able to try and help people just to show them that, hey, there is a better way, you don't have to do this, because it kind of sucks the people that you're reaching out to don't like it and most people who are doing it themselves don't enjoy it either.
Claire Davis 8:05
So just to clarify, when you get pitch slapped, are you responding and kind of giving people pointers to say, you can do better than this? And I'm gonna help you?
Dan Mott 8:15
I did for a long time. Yeah, I just I simply don't have the time to do it anymore. So I am, I'm at a point where I need to scale back my outreach, because I can't keep up with it anymore. So I know that anyone who pitched laughs to me is a has a lower conversion rate in terms of me being able to turn them into a customer. So which is why they became a lower priority for me, which is why I stopped doing it. But 100% I used to do it all the time when I had the capacity to do so. And I would just gently say like, Hey, here's why this didn't work, or I'd provide advice, or I would send them to I have a free guide that shows you how to start better conversations with people on LinkedIn, where to find leads, and the easiest way to start a conversation in a very casual way. So I you know, I point them to that, or I'd say, Hey, here's kind of like, Would I just even ask them? Would you like help with your pitch? Or, you know, like, clearly you're trying to find leads or customers on LinkedIn, how's it going for you? So I tried my best to help but the way that I can help more people is through continent scale.
Claire Davis 9:13
So yeah. I mean, I feel like the old you know, thing is true. People want to work with people that they like, I remember this one time, I was calling on a physician and slaps you. And if you've been slapped, you don't land in that category. Nobody wants to be immediately sold on anything anywhere.
Dan Mott 9:36
But I remember actually work, but it only works for the absolute right people at the right point, right. Like they have to be actively thinking, I have this problem and I'm looking for this solution and then you land in their inbox. Yeah, and those are only people within your target market. So likely if you are sending it like you're blasting cold messages, you're not being very thorough targeted, which means that most of the people aren't even the right people. And then out of that 10% of the right people, it is very low that they are right at that point in their buying journey for you to land in their inbox at the right time.
Claire Davis 10:14
So I know what I know of you. I mean, I probably know too much about you at this point, Dan, but what I know of you is that you derive all your strategy from data. And that is something that I think goes a bit unleveraged on LinkedIn for for most people, most people in sales, like I mean, you know, they're used to maybe checking Salesforce and getting numbers that come down from marketing or, you know, the strategy team, but not necessarily with social media networks. So can you talk a little bit about how data has a hand in what you do?
Dan Mott 10:46
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really kind of the guide to everything, because without it, we're kind of in the dark. The ability to measure the success of an individual message of a campaign of a strategy. Rarely, we can set goals for ourselves, we're gonna say, we're going to start this campaign, or we're going to send this email or we're going to use this message in our DMS, because we want to achieve x. So we're going to send it out to 100 people, and we're going to look at how many people how many people actually responded, of those people that responded, how many actually hopped on a call with us of those people who have done a call with us how many actually converted into a client? So by being able to look at those four numbers, and kind of work backwards, to see what our conversion rates and our success rates throughout that funnel are, we can know what was the success of this campaign, and we can measure that now against other campaigns and see that, hey, well, campaign a was actually the most successful because it converted at the highest rate. And really all depends on what your goals are, right? Are you looking for more leads? Are you looking for more customers? Are you looking for better leads better customers? So it's highly situational. But having those numbers having those metrics to tell you what's working and what's not working, give you the guidance to make the decision against your goals to say, Yes, this campaign worked? Or no, it did not and why?
Claire Davis 12:07
Okay, so for those people who are listening, you know, I have to say, of all the different industries that are on here, I find that the folks that I know, in my experience so far in medical sales is that, you know, LinkedIn is relatively underused Salesforce navigator. Sure, sometimes. But most of the time, we're not a very present group on LinkedIn. So if somebody was to say, Okay, I want to have LinkedIn become part of my overall strategy when I'm trying to reach breast surgeons, right? Where should they start?
Dan Mott 12:48
So if you I think that's kind of the like, the good point right there is that you need to start with the audience, you need to start with the target market and understand who your buyer is. What what makes them tick, why would they buy from you? Why would they buy in general, but more specifically, why would they buy from you? And then even knowing are they on LinkedIn? Right? Because that's, that's a big thing. If they're not on LinkedIn, then you're not going to be able to sell them. So so understanding like, does this market exist here are they actively engaged here, because without those things, and there's, there's really like, you're kind of going to an empty alleyway and trying to pitch your services, like, if there's no one there to hear you, then it's, it's not going to do you any good. So start with the audience know, who your target market is, where they are, what they care about, because those things all inform you how you need to talk to them, and that's talking to them is through your content, it's through the information that's on your profile, it's through the comments that you comment back and forth, it's the DMS that you send to them. And then obviously, throughout the rest of the sales process, hopping on a call with them, the emails that you send them and everything in between and beyond. So it very much starts with the audience. And this goes really starting to go into my five pillars of social selling, or my five principles of social LinkedIn social selling. So the first one is audience, the second is profile. So I treat my profile like a landing page, it's there to provide information on who I am, what I do, and why you should care about it. So having that dialed in, and very hyper focused on the needs, the pain points, and what your target market actually cares about is extremely important. Because if they see your content, if they see your connection request, if they see your messages, and they actually you get them intrigued, right, you get that you catch their interest, the first thing that they're going to do is they're gonna go look at your profile, and they're gonna start to look up more information about you. So that is extremely important. And then I'll stop there because we can kind of go on but I want to see where you go with this because I know you were talking about Sales Navigator so
Claire Davis 14:52
Oh, yes. Well, I mean, you know, what struck me about working with you so closely was how, how closely you look at the data and also how systematically you do it. So you know it for someone who's listening to this podcast in medical sales, most likely, they're not using a lot of additional sales metrics outside of what they get from their organization. So is it reasonable that they could track their own social metrics without spending, like, oodles and hours? You know, to do so. So? And do you track your own? Or do you use different programs to do it?
Dan Mott 15:28
Yeah, so I definitely use a combination of free and paid tools, as well as just like simply Google Sheets. So if I need to, especially if I'm doing something, right, I don't have the time. If I need to invest in a tool, I need to be able to justify the budget spend. And also, if it's a new tool, I have to justify the amount of time that it's going to take me to learn how to use that tool, and also set it up and integrate it right. So there's a lot of complications. So anytime I do anything new, I always start with Google Sheets, because that is the easiest way to just capture and manipulate data. Then from there, once you start to work, once you start refining your process, then you can start in like looking at what tools can I use to do this? How can I make this faster? How can I automate it? How can I remove myself from the process? Because that's how you make that routine, that process more efficient. But to get started, get started? Like, the amount of Google Sheets I have in my Drive is kind of absurd.
Claire Davis 16:27
Yeah, it's a jungle in there. One thing that I really liked that you were reviewing the other day, I think it was in a post very meta of you was you were talking about all the polls that you had run over the last was a year was a year more than a year, two years.
Dan Mott 16:44
So it is since polls came out. So I think it's a little bit less than two years. But yeah, now I've posted 94, it might be 95. Now I forget. Yeah, because I posted this one. So 95 polls in the past two ish years, I kind of stumbled upon polls when they came out. And I was like, Oh, hey, look at this feature. I didn't even know this was and I've literally posted one every single week since then.
Claire Davis 17:03
Oh, wow. So what are some of the insights you got from the polls that you reviewed?
Dan Mott 17:09
So holes, there was a lot of controversy around them when they first came out and for pretty much the half of the time that they've been available, because they were artificially inflating the metrics on them. Right. So I don't know how, how deep you want to get into this. But basically, when you interact on a post, it triggers the algorithm to say that, hey, people actually care about this. But those interactions, those actions that you take are weighed differently. So scrolling through your feed, and just like reacting to posts, throwing a thumbs up, or you know, a clap, or the you know, any of those little little emoji reactions. They don't do much. But if you comment on a post, if you click See More, and if you spend time dwelling on a post, which means you're literally just actively looking at that post for a period of time, those are all things that tell the algorithm like, hey, people like this post, let's show it to more people, you then get more engagement, which results in more views and kind of cycles from there. So I say all that to say that voting in a poll is super easy, because it's a multiple choice question like, right, you don't have to read too much into the post, it's just you kind of fly by boom, I can click a button and I'm done. I've now participated in this poll, they used a way that very heavily, so polls would get a lot of engagement artificially, and then realize that so then they would be like, Well, I'm just going to do polls, then. So then they put out a lot of crap polls, and then everyone hated polls even more as a result of it. So so they changed that about, they change that in end of January, beginning of February, they switch that. So literally, if I like when I looked at that graph, like all the numbers are up here, and then it like clearly goes down like that, and like cuts it in half. However, polls still are really awesome, because they're so easy to engage, because it's very easy to start a conversation. Because it's it makes the choice to engage simple because it's just like a yes or no question. It's this versus that it's choose one of these three, right, it kind of it doesn't take much thinking and and and helps to emotionally drive people to say like to have an opinion on it, one that they're compelled to actually engage like comments on right. So no matter despite the fact that LinkedIn has rightfully so put them back in their place, they're still an amazing tool for engagement. Go and get going. And if you want to talk about like what specifically I found on my content, yeah, which some of it applies, but then you also kind of have to run your own audit on your content to see what works specifically for you, your market and your audience.
Claire Davis 19:48
Got it. Um, the one thing that I want to re emphasize is the limiting of choices. Because you know, we talk a lot about you know, calls to action and getting people to take action at the end of posts and on a cover letter and all those things in the resume world. But I think it's really important to remind that they've got to be, there's got to be just a couple choices. In fact, if there's too many people disregard it, it's too hard, right? It's just too much, right? Or then they started thinking about more and more options. So did you find a sweet spot? Was it like, two options? Three options? It was terrible. Yeah, yes.
Dan Mott 20:29
Alright, so I looked at the ad looked at all first, I cut off all the art of artificially inflated posts. So that was just looking at relevant metrics. And I looked at my top five performing posts and posts, four out of the five only had two options. One was yes or no, but the other rest of them were kind of like this versus that like pitting the two against each other and making people choose. So that was one really good insight, because I think that that one applies across the board. And this, this next one does as well, you actually need to pick a side and like, aggressively defend it or argue it, and especially make that clear in the hook the very first or first or first and second line of the post. Yeah, yeah, that is what got those were like all of my top performing polls was because I only gave you two choices, I positioned this versus that I chose aside and like vehemently was like, This is why it's this one and not. Because, like that's what like that digs under people's skin. And they're like, no, no, like, or they're like, Yes, I 100% agree with you, Dan. And this is why. So it gets a lot of people to comment to engage in start conversations.
Claire Davis 21:33
Yeah, I can see that, I can see that I went back my social, I have a gal who helps me with social media. She's my social media manager. And she, she never looking back at how certain posts have done. And by far last year, we're looking at 2021. You know, polls were off the charts, and specifically one that I asked about, like a turkey dinner, it has nothing to do with my brand and had nothing to do with helping people get into health care or do better in health care. It was about like, what kind of sides of potatoes Do you prefer? And not expect? But do you feel like there's a certain style of posts to to veer off even a little further, that's being favored now, and LinkedIn
Dan Mott 22:16
is very much and it actually goes it aligns to for that that same exact reason that your post about which kind of potatoes Do you like or prefer performed well, is because we need to be hyper focused on our target market and their pain points. Because that's the type of content that resonates with people that get them thinking more about dry, like making a purchasing decision. So those kinds of posts are extremely important, but they only apply to a very small portion of our network and beyond. So those posts are like more conversion style posts, which are extremely important if you want to get sales. But you can't use them all the time. Because they're not good at getting you reach awareness and growing your network. So when you talk about things like right, when you're, you're now on a sales call, having having that kind of creating that kind of post. And then you get off that call and you go sit at the watercooler and you're just bullshitting with your friends, like on a break in between calls, and you start talking about, like what shows your watch and you start talking about what kind of potato is better. Those are the conversations that resonate with everyone. So people within your network and your second and third degree connections, people that they're connected with, that it is easier for them to engage on that type of content. So that content performs very well, all like, you know, we say like the the personal posts, people like telling personal stories or sharing like what they did over the weekend, all of that stuff resonates very well, because it's applicable to almost everyone, as opposed to being hyper focused on our target market. So in terms of pure reach and engagement, the more like personal style posts, sharing stories, talking about what you're doing, right, like when my daughter was born, and I posted a picture of her like, that was one of my best performing posts, for obvious reasons, right? And people just like want to support you. And a lot of times when you get super nitty gritty, right, like I'm not in medical sales. So when you get super nitty gritty on talking about medical sales, it's very hard for me to gauge on your content, Claire, but check it out, right, like, it's super easy for me to talk about potatoes, so it's easy for me to Yeah, so that's why that kind of content is easy to engage with and get to a lot of reach. But it's equally important to have that hyperfocus content that's actually going to drive conversations and sales for you.
Claire Davis 24:35
That makes sense. It makes sense. You know, I think that a lot of these things are not necessarily new. Right? I mean, it's not like we it's not like brands have been marketing themselves based on the business in the past. And now suddenly, they're like, oh, aha, personal branding really works or, you know, we're appealing to other things outside have the actual business conversation really is attractive? So can you talk a little bit about some things that you think have changed in sales from maybe, you know, when you were starting into in sales and business development 10 years ago? And what you're doing and what you're seeing now? And what's the what's changed since then? What's, what's happening today?
Dan Mott 25:23
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest factor was obviously COVID. Because people were forced online, people literally weren't allowed to leave their house, people lost their jobs, people quit their jobs, people, right, there was a lot of unfortunate circumstances that happened. And people didn't have much of a choice other than to go online and start their business or start building their personal brand to help them find new job. So very much we're now like, over the past year or two have been making the shift towards the people's personal brand being incredibly important. And companies No, like the it, the weight is shifting where the company is no longer have the the authority, they still have the presence in the market, right. But now it is very much people do business with people. So the fact that everyone is in control of their own personal brand can go out there and start conversations, and literally connect with anyone around the world in any capacity without having to deal with gatekeepers, right? Like, it's super easy to go start a conversation with a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, if they're active on on LinkedIn or any other social network for that matter. And that just wasn't a possibility. I mean, not too long ago. So yeah, I mean, it's it, individuals are empowered now. And I think that that plays a lot into like, the whole state of what is it just like where we're everyone's kind of out of job now and looking for it, I think that people feel empowered to the fact that they, hey, I deserve a better job, or I deserve this, or I have the brand, I have the personal power, right? Like this is this is a thing that I can add to my resume, I have X amount of connections, I have these very strategic relationships that are gonna be very useful to you and your business. It's not like me begging for a job anymore. It's like, Hey, you should hire me, because here's the value that I bring to your organization. So I think the weight has shifted, I think the scales have shifted to empower the individual. And as long as they have a personal brand to be able to, to hold that power. That is definitely something that has been in the last decade building, but I think COVID severely accelerated that process.
Claire Davis 27:36
Yeah, I think you're right, it did, it definitely accelerated it. And then suddenly, you know, with no other outlet, we had to get online. And lo and behold, that's where everybody else was, too. Yeah, I was interesting. I was just doing a training this morning on video. And it was with a group of executives, and they were all new to creating video for themselves feedback, they were all new to creating video for themselves, you know, and just learning about the power of it. And, you know, part of it was that they're also looking for their next step in their career. And so I said, Well, look, you know, you post a video, you can look at the impressions that you get from the video and the content that you post, that's definitely something you can talk about in an interview, particularly if you're in sales and marketing, you know, because this is now the this is now the game. This is now the new game, right? It's not just okay, we've got the sales training that comes down from corporate, we have all our scripts, we go in, we say the script, and then we, you know, keep trying until that script really sticks. There are so many new avenues now. And I'm hoping that companies start to, I'm hoping my hope is that while I love to see that job seekers are starting to embrace personal branding, right? When done, right, it's a really powerful piece of your career. Right? Because Because then no matter where you go, your mission vision values goes with you, regardless of what's on your nametag at the time. And my hope is that health care companies follow suit, and that they start to empower their people to become brand advocates. Because really, if the entire company like the, you know, five Megan from finance stem from it, like this marketing team, like all the customer success reps, right? If all of them are empowered to share the mission and vision of the company, then everybody's in sales, right? And so it's just infused them into the business. And I think I see that's where things are going. I hope that more companies align with that too. And I think the next step is, you know, getting these major major health care not to go off on too much of a tangent, but Getting these big health care companies to reevaluate what their social media requirements and rules are for their teams. And to then instead, instead of being too strict, empower and coach and guide people on what they can do give people tools, you know, to use to leverage the reason that people love them in the first place and want to do business with them online. So do you feel like there's a happy medium between, you know, say a company is comfortable with their employees being online, right? And getting into the social selling in a digital space? Do you think there's a happy medium between is a free for all, and we're gonna just censor everything that you say? Or you're fired? Because we don't know what to do with you? Do you think like, where's the where's the sweet spot?
Dan Mott 30:53
I think that censorship, and I might be biased on this. But I think that censorship and compliance or anything, compliance is important in itself. But I think that there's like this over regulation of compliance, especially in like, how, especially in healthcare and finance, like I see it a lot. But, I mean, these companies are literally holding back their employees, which is the future of the way that work is going right? Like they need to be empowering their employees not holding them back. Especially their sales, their sales reps, right? Like, they need to have free range, to build a personal brand to create content without restrictions, that is going to help them build an audience and find customers for the business. But when you're constantly cutting them off and saying, No, you can't do this, no, you can't do that. It's, it's preventing them. It's literally just like trying to throw a stick in the in the tire like, and you're just gonna come to a screeching halt. I think people like companies need to do the opposite. And I'm not a lawyer. Right? So I can I can only say what I see is that I think that compliance and regular regulatory stuff is absolutely necessary. But I think they're, they're going overboard with it. I think that there are workarounds. And I'm sure that if you sit down with your legal team, and like bring in marketing and bring in your sales reps and have a conversation around it, what can we do? How can we actually free these up while still protecting ourselves and still limiting liability from a from a corporate perspective, right, like whether that's, again, I'm not a lawyer, but like, whether that's just like mandatory in your profile, you have to say, like, these opinions are my own and not of X company that I work for. Right? Like, I don't know if that's enough. But if that is right, like, then you're giving them the freedom to go out there, build a personal brand, create content, without limitations without restrictions, that is only going to help them as an individual and help you as a company. And I think that companies need to be doing the opposite of that. They need to not only be removing the restrictions from a compliance perspective, but they also need to be providing training and enablement and hay like, cool now, like, not only are we not going to say you can't do this, but hey, here's someone who really knows what they're talking about. And they're going to teach you how to do it yourself. They're going to empower and enable you to go out there, build your personal brand. So then that way you can build your network, start more conversations, build better relationships, and find more clients for us as an organization.
Claire Davis 33:25
And on that note, no. I completely agree. I completely agree. It can't be the Wild West, would branding work for a company, if it were the Wild West? No, you know, you've got to stay on message, you loop in the departments, you must and I really do hope that I see more and more companies in empowering their teams and people on all levels to speak about and speak appropriately, according to the company, and, and legal and all of those things about the mission and vision of the brand. I think that's where social selling for me, I think that's where it goes from, I have a sales team and they sell to everyone in our organization is constantly selling, because they're just in love with the mission and the vision that we have. And they they, they just can't Well, they want to talk about it, they want to live it, breathe it, be it and and that's how I want to do business. You know, I want my people I want them to feel empowered in that way too. But it's interesting, I think social selling is almost like it's it's starting with the individual and then hopefully it broadens to the company whereas before it was the company and then they thought oh, we need some direct sales people and this develop people and now it's sort of this interesting pendulum happening.
Dan Mott 34:46
Ya know, so I, I work with solopreneurs for a reason is because the methodology that I teach around LinkedIn social selling, is you have to build a personal brand in order to capitalize on it. So So social selling is very much an individualistic activity. And yes, as an organization, you can build up programs that empower or enable and train your employees how to do it. But it's very much giving, arming them with the tools and resources that they need to go to market with their own personal strategy. And yes, you can give them content, you can give them resources that they can repurpose, or use or whatever. But again, it really needs to be them they are. And I think that this is the problem a lot of companies feel like they don't want to say like they own their employees, but like the way that they treat them with how they have to position themselves on their own personal social networks, really kind of feels that way. And I think that they need to free their employees to allow them to have the ability to build their personal brand to build a stronger network to build better relationships, that's just only going to result in positive results for the individual and the organization.
Claire Davis 35:54
Yeah, yeah, I think a lot of what you do, I know you work primarily with solopreneurs. But I think a lot of what you do can help people on whatever career trajectory trajectory they are on, you know, whether they're working for a company or not, though, I know that I know that your target market is really specific. So you know, social selling isn't just a buzzword. It's a real, it's a real thing. Anybody can do it.
Dan Mott 36:20
Kind of you think it's also a buzzword. And I actually, so I actually went on LinkedIn, and I had to do like keyword research on this. And LinkedIn, social selling is a completely different thing. It's more like affiliate marketing. And like, it's so crazy to me like that. It's like in different social channels, it means a completely different thing to people. And I was like, that almost like made me nervous. I was like, do I need to now rethink the way that my messaging and brand sticks out? Right? Like how I'm being perceived by the market. But it's funny that there's a difference between where you are what those terms mean? And that's fine, because I'm not there. I'm here. So that plays back to the point of like, know, your audience know where they are and what they care about. Because the words that you use the things that you say, are perceived differently by people. So it's, it's really more like every word counts. Words have a lot of power.
Claire Davis 37:11
It's true. Do you feel like you'll stick with the with the moniker social selling? Because it applies?
Dan Mott 37:24
I hear you I hear Yeah. So I added Twitter to my mix. My coach was pushing me I think a little bit towards Facebook, and I'm just like, No, I'm not gonna do it. So I fought hard for that one.
Claire Davis 37:34
Good for you. Good for you. I'm I just joined Twitter myself. I'm a Twitter newbie. So if anybody's listening and wants to help, help me out, follow me on Twitter and show me what to do. Because it's, it's a learning curve. But you know, we'll see where it goes. It was better than jumping on tic tac. So yeah, I can't say that much. I can't either. It's way too much, way too many. So you started sharing one of your pillars earlier in the conversation? Do you want to share your five pillars of social selling? Cuz I really love to hear that man.
Dan Mott 38:08
Yeah, definitely. So the first one is audience, it's understanding who your target market is what they care about, and making sure that you speak to them appropriately, and that your message resonates with them. Because if you can't get this right, then literally the the other five principles don't matter. Okay, so the second pressure profile, your profile is kind of your central hub on LinkedIn, you can put out content, you can comment in public, and it's going to draw people back to your profile. And then they make a decision on what to do next, from there, whether that's download a free resource to go visit your website, join an upcoming event that you're hosting, or that you're going to be on whatever it is, that is like your hub, they're going to come to your profile. So you have to treat your profile like a landing page, using the information that you know about your audience. From there, and this is why I stopped there, because I wasn't sure where we're going with the conversation. Sure. So personal branding is extremely important. And in order to achieve that, you need to create content. So creating content, or content specifically is the third principle of my LinkedIn social selling framework. So now that you understand who your audience is, and you have a place to communicate who you are and what you do when they find you, now you can go out there and you can actually start creating content that is going to be relevant, again, tapping into your audience, what do they care about? Go Kreon, create content that speaks to that. Because that's how you're going to attract your target market, your ideal customer back to you. If you're creating content that they want to consume or engage with, they're going to keep coming back more and more, they're going to keep showing up. And that is how you start to that's how you start a conversation. That's how you build relationships with them. And that's how you're going to close more business. So audience profile content, the next is engagement, because you can't just create content and hope that people right, if you build it, they will come it's definitely not true on LinkedIn. It might be more so on other social networks, but LinkedIn from what I found is a especially heavily dependent on engagement. So, I have said, If I had a gun to my head and I had to choose, I'm only going to create my own content, or I'm only going to engage on other people's content, I would ever create a post again. And I think, I think just switches at a certain once you build enough brand, recognition and reputation that kind of switches because you can afford to, but engagement is hypercritical, especially in the beginning, you need to be out there, like going and supporting other people's engaging on relevant content. Because that's also how people find you a comment to his shot can be just as impactful as a post that you write, whether it's one line or 50 lines. So when you go out and you comment, something insightful, it's a lot quicker to do, you're building, you're supporting an individual person. So you're building that relationship with them. And then other people now see that they go check out your profile, they start to get you to know you now they're going back and they're seeing your content, you're building this web of of information around what you care about what you do and what you have to offer that are now pulling, it's right, you're just creating a magnet for you to attract people, we can dive into these a little bit more, I'll just finish up with the fifth one. The fifth principle is prospecting. Because a lot of people spend a lot of time going through and developing strategies around these four principles. And then just sit back and wait for people to DM them and ask for a phone call or ask for more information on their services. You need to be proactive about understanding where your lead where your best leads come from, and how to start a conversation with them. So taking a look at who's engaging in my posts, who's sending me connection requests? who's visiting my profile? Who's doing this? Who's doing that? And when do I start a conversation? And what do I say to them?
Claire Davis 41:42
Oh, and this is all in your course. Oh, yeah. So um, I think that that is a really, it's a really comprehensive strategy. And what I like about particularly the commenting part, the engagement part is that anybody can do that. And if there's anything I know about health care and medical sales folks is they do we do not engage, or we don't, we just don't want to be seen on LinkedIn for whatever reason, we lurk like crazy. But posting, commenting is much rarer. Now I am seeing an uptick in commenting, which is great. And I'd love to see it more. But I think that it's just the beginning of the push that I'm seeing in the industry, for people to get more active on LinkedIn. So I love that you can bring it down to what's the what's the least, what's the lowest barrier to entry. So comment, the comment, you appreciate something that you see on LinkedIn, and then you connect with other people in those comments. Gosh, I mean, camaraderie right there. Yeah, I love that strategy.
Dan Mott 42:45
That's all it takes is something that happens in public, it gives you a reason to now start a conversation, literally anything. And when you think about this in person, right? Like I think this is the problem that we often disconnect from being in person, right? We were talking about this in the beginning of the episode. I recently went to an event and we made custom shoes with our logos on our logos are like bright pink and like standout and they were like checkered the amount of people that walked up to us. And we're like, Hey, nice shoes. And then we started a conversation with them and then realized that they were right, we were at a relevant event. So obviously, but it was, you know, people that were like people who did seem similar things to us, or people who are perfect ideal clients for us, or people who were good potential partners for us. And literally all it took was, hey, nice shoes to start the conversation. And then boom, hey, what do you do? Let's learn more about each other. And then how, hey, this is how we can work together. So literally, you just need a reason to start a conversation. That can be anything that could be a comment, that could be a profile view, that could be a I mean, there's there's so many reasons to start a conversation on LinkedIn. I think more people need to think of that, like, how would I talk this person if this was happening in public, as opposed to yeah, yes, exactly.
Claire Davis 43:51
That's a perfect loop back to the beginning of what we were talking about. How can I be more human? You know, how can I connect with people on more of a human, normal conversational level, I remember calling on this one doctor once, and I was heading to her office and the day before I had tried CrossFit. So if anybody else out there, he does CrossFit, like kudos, that is hard to do. And so what I did was, I take this lunch over to the office, and the elevators broken, and she's on the fifth floor. So I schlep this Panera Bread lunch box, great. up five flights of stairs and literally on the last stair, I was clutching the arm rail, because I could not walk any further. So I hobble into the office and I sit down and I'm like, thank God and she comes in gracious as ever. And she goes, Oh, hey, how you doing? I go, to be honest, do you work out and I told her this story and she and I she was one of my favorite clients for my entire duration. To start, in fact, I still talked to her. That was because we connected over something completely on business related, it was being extremely sore after a CrossFit workout. So I should have taken notes out of Aaron Geiger is playbook and started CrossFit long ago. So it wasn't so hard.
Dan Mott 45:17
But you know, it really why in my profile I have in for like, I've just, here's information about me what I do. And then I put like bonus fun facts at the bottom of it. That's not business related. I talked about how I love playing Dungeons and Dragons, like playing video games, spending time with my family, like I have, right like dad is one of the things I have in my tagline. And I do all these things for a very particular reason, because that is a non business thing that I can connect with on people. And the amount of times that it started conversations with me that right a personal conversation that then led to a business conversation. And in some cases, clients or partnerships or collaborations or anything that drives my business forward is absurd. And it's literally just because I put that in my profile, or I sometimes mentioned my comment or in my content or in comments. And then people might even care about what I put what I said in the post, but they're like, Hey, I like d&d, too. And then all of a sudden, now we're like down a rabbit hole.
Claire Davis 46:11
So yeah, yeah. Well, I, I think the undercurrent of this entire conversation is to get more personal, right to, to connect with people on a personal level, and take the corporate hat off once in a while. Because when we do, that's when social selling can really happen. And that's when sales feels really, really good, because that's truly being genuine in sales and connecting with those on authentic connections. So I'm so grateful for what you're doing. I love that you're showing people how to do this, not just the what should I do, but here are the steps follow this action plan. So if people want to find out more about you, and if they want to maybe check out your course, or see where they can connect with you about hot pink checkered shoes, or Dungeons and Dragons, where do you want them to reach out to you?
Dan Mott 47:01
Well, I think the obvious one is come hang out with me on LinkedIn, shoot me a DM and you can literally just say, Claire, and I will know exactly where I found you and we'll start a conversation.
Claire Davis 47:12
You will immediately delete the message. No, just kidding.
Dan Mott 47:19
Yeah, if you and if you're more interested in LinkedIn strategies, techniques, advice I have. In my, in my profile, there might be there's a link to my website, 60, media six three media.com. All of this stuff is right there, I have a free lead gen guide that is going to teach you where to find the best leads and how to start conversations with them. If you're consistently posting content, and you have updated your profile. I also have a weekly newsletter, where I send out tips and advice. All this stuff is free. Obviously, I post every single day about LinkedIn content. So you can just follow me there as well. If you do need more support, if you need a very systematic structured approach to how you're using LinkedIn to make sure that when you're spending time you're doing it effectively and getting actual tangible results from it. I do have a course available that is $99, if you want to check it out.
Claire Davis 48:11
Awesome. And I'll make sure everybody if you're listening that I've linked everything in the show notes. So if you want to connect with Dan, I'll put his profile in there, I'll add all the links that he just shared. And definitely do yourself a favor because Dan's taught me a ton in a short amount of time about how to really leverage the social aspects of LinkedIn. And to make it fun to so you can't go wrong. Well, thank you so much, Dan. It's always such a pleasure to have some time with you. And I'm so grateful for the hour we've had to spend together and I hope that you'll come back and we can dive even deeper into some of these pillars.
Dan Mott 48:44
Yeah, you bet. Claire. Thanks very much for having me on, of course anytime.
Claire Davis 48:46
Until next time. Thank you for tuning in.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
