175: Sam Dunning On Selling Like A Marketer

What's poppin' y'all, it's your man James Say What's Sales Buckley, and welcome to your weekly dose of Make It Happen Mondays with your host, John Barrows. As always, these episodes are made possible by our partners, SalesLoft, Gong, VanillaSoft, Vidyard, Proposify, ZoomInfo, LoomCube, and Rise. Today, our guest is Sam Dunning, sales director and co-owner at WebChoice, an award-winning world-class web design firm offering a myriad of business growth and technology services. Sam is going to be speaking with John about marketing and sales alignment, positive impressions, the term thought leader, and why it's not always a good term for certain professionals, as well as the future of the SDR role, just to name a few poignant topics.

This episode is sure to provoke a lot of thought and have you seeing things from a long-term perspective by the time it's all wrapped up. Let's pass it over to John and Sam to get it going. All yours, John. Good afternoon, everybody. It's John Barrows. Make it happen Monday. Hopefully, you had a fantastic weekend. I am here with a very interesting guest to talk about something that I've beaten the drum on for a long time, about marketing and how sales need to take a little bit more of the marketing angle to where we are going these days. So, Sam Dunning, sales director and co-owner of WebChoice and founder and host of the Sam's Business Growth Show. How are you doing, my friend? John, all good, man.

Really, really excited to chat to you. But yeah, doing good on this side of the fence, man. How are you? Yeah, I'm doing great, man. I think we were talking right before this about how both of our businesses have been thriving here because of this digital world that we're living in and the lack of face-to-face, in-person stuff where a lot of people are struggling. And I think it's because both of us know inherently that we can, first of all, survive, and this is the way the world's going anyways, but we need to take a different viewpoint here. And so, the baseline for this conversation, because I do really think that sales professionals should be paying attention right now to marketing and not fighting marketing.

Now, a little context here. I actually have my degree in marketing because I didn't even know sales was a profession, just like most people, so I fell into sales, but I do have very deep-rooted understanding and appreciation for marketing. But most sales reps come at it from a sales rep standpoint, and again, marketing is almost the bad guy, right? Because they give us shitty leads, and we have to follow up on them. Now, we're being held accountable for MQLs versus SQLs, and it sucks, right? So, talk to me from your perspective of why you think sales reps should take more of a marketing mindset. And let's go with kind of how we can do that as well. Yeah, yeah. Just to add to your point, John, I want to take it from an even more controversial viewpoint that salespeople shouldn't rely on marketers.

Yes. That's why we should become marketers. So, what I mean by that, John, is if we're sitting at our desk, whether we're working from home, whether we're in the office, whatever's going on with us, we can't just be there sitting idle waiting for the next inbound lead or the white paper download or demo request to come in, because the chances are we're in a team with not just us as the main salesperson. There's a bunch of other sales reps sitting next to us, eager for those inbound leads, those juicy leads to come on through. And if we're just waiting for a next lead that's coming from marketing, we're probably going to be waiting quite a while. At best, maybe we're getting one or two a day.

And that's if marketing, we've got things, got it out. At worst, we might be getting a couple a week. So, if we're banging the drum, if we're doing the traditional techniques that we can dive into in a sec, such as cold calling, cold emailing, and we're just sticking to things that have worked for years and years, we're probably not going to be getting the results that we hope for, especially now as we know there's stats that show it's more difficult than ever to reach decision makers, especially on direct lines. And when you're ringing direct dials and people don't know who you are, you're not necessarily going to get the pickup, that's why the conversation is going to be so interesting because we're going to talk exactly how we can become marketers, the channels we can utilize on top of the traditional techniques that no longer work as well to get those all important leads for ourselves and not rely on our marketing teams.

I'm going to take a small sidebar here on this because I'm curious on a conversation. I have a couple of people who are on the marketing side who literally think that cold calling and prospecting cold outreach is the worst thing ever. It's ineffective and all this other stuff, but what I'm trying to get across to them is cold calling and cold outreach is pretty much the exact same thing as advertising because their pushback to me is, well, it's an uninvited call, it's an uninvited, I didn't ask you to do that. But when I'm scrolling through my phone and I see a pop-up ad, I didn't ask for that either. When I drive down the street and I see a billboard, I didn't see that either. So isn't really ultimately what we're both doing the same thing in a lot of ways?

To a certain extent. And to add to that, a lot of outbound teams now are using inbound to warm up their outbound prospecting. Yeah. So it's marketing, right? And that's all part of the marketing cycle because it could be that you've cold called someone, but they've engaged on a piece of content you've put out, whether that's on your LinkedIn feed or whether that's a white paper or webinar or something like that. So it's not really, really cold. They have shown some signs of engagement and perhaps they fit your idle customer profile. And then you're using that content that they've engaged on as a way to leverage the cool to say, look, I can see you're interested in X, Y, and Z. Yeah. Right. Shall we have a chat about this?

Because our product can help you with this. Does it make sense to discuss further? And vice versa too, because like, for instance, Morgan, right? Like he does a whole bunch of outreach, right? Email, phone, video, all this different stuff. And then all of a sudden an inbound lead will come, right? And I usually get the inbound leads just to kind of scrape them and see which ones are worth following up on, whatever. And I'll look at the name that comes in and I'll go in Salesforce. I'll look at the records and you'll see all this activity from Morgan. And it's, by the way, it's usually not to the person that reached out, right? Not to the inbound. It's to somebody else. So I look at that and I'm like, okay, there is no way that what Morgan was doing there from an outbound sales perspective didn't influence somebody at that organization to then go tell somebody else to then reach out to us the way that they wanted to reach out to us, right?

So I think both on both sides, you know, yay, we get the marketing and we get the, you know, interest and we have to figure out they downloaded these things and we can use that as, hey, okay, they're kind of warm here. Let me go now outbound to them in a warm way. But also all the outbound effort that we do is leading to a lot of those inbounds. Exactly. Exactly. Especially if you're doing a multi-channel approach, if you're doing outbound calling, if you're doing outbound email, if you're doing outbound stuff across different social channels, perhaps you're doing some direct mail, it's all going to build your brand because they're seeing your company, your name in front of them from all these different channels over time, they've got, although they might think it, you're, you're somewhere in the back of their mind.

So when they think that they need your product or your service, you're probably going to be the one they reach out to inbound. So it all comes full cycle. That's where, and that's where I, you know, when I say that I think sales reps should take a marketing lens on this, you know, marketing ultimately is about impressions, right? Hopefully positive impressions. You know, they see us, they hear us, and there's all this conscious and subconscious things that happen. I remember a long time ago, I watched this really, really cool experiment where they drove this guy around, they, they drove three people around the city, right? And then they asked them, Hey, come up with a brand slogan for dogs. Like it was like a dog pet grooming shop or something like that.

And all of them in separate rooms all came up with like the dogs and these pearly gates. And like, they all looked kind of similar. And it was the exact thing that the business wanted them to create because they had put all these things around the city that subconsciously were hitting that person. So when they got back and said, Hey, I'm going to create something, they all basically created the same thing. And they all created what the, the experiment was expecting them to create. So with that, we're in an impression world, right? They, they see us, they hear us. Um, you know, we share a piece of content, we comment on somebody's post, we make a cold call, we send them something in the mail.

I think sales reps get the, you said the traditional stuff, right? That I'm going to email somebody I'm going to, I'm going to call. But I think that a lot of them are still struggling with content and sharing and those types of things because there's no short-term gratification for this, right? There's a short-term gratification when I fire off 5,000 emails and I get five responses back and I'm like, Oh man, somebody responded or I make a cold call and somebody picks up and I'm like, Holy shit. Like there's an endorphin rush there of like, ah, I got it. Right. But all this social stuff is kind of longer term. Brand is longer. You're not going to post something, at least if you do it the right way and get somebody to be like, Oh my God, Sam, I want to do business with you.

Like that's not how this works. So a let's justify why that stuff's important. And then let's get into the specifics of why they need to, of what they should be doing. Sure thing. So yeah, you're exactly right. A lot of what we're going to talk about is more of a longer term play, which like you say, whereas you can do cold calls and you might get a couple of appointments booked in a day, you could do a bunch of cold emails and likewise, you might get a couple of appointments, but that's going to probably take up your whole day doing that. So why not look at other channels that not only are different, but can make you stand out from all the other sales professionals that are doing the same old thing over and over, hoping for results.

So yeah, to where we want to get to is to utilize content. So in our case, it's probably going to be LinkedIn. If you're a B2B sales professional, that's where your ideal customers can be hanging out. So producing content consistently on channels like that can not only put you a step ahead of everyone else, but these are ways that you can actually build a personal brand, which is going to be good, not just short term for your current company, but when you move to any other companies, because it's getting your name out there. But long term, it's going to help you build recognition. And I don't really like the term thought leader, but it's going to give you leadership. It's going to show you actually know what you're talking about when it comes to your industry.

So in my case, digital marketing, in your case, teaching people sales, whatever your profession is and whatever you like to do. So long term, you're going to be the person, if you're putting out content each and every day that shows you know what you're talking about, that's not just chatting nonsense about your product or service, but actually giving useful insights, whether that's via video, whether that's via written text, whether that's images, but actually answers questions you know your customers struggle with, gives them useful help, shares case studies, all these other useful tips and tricks. Over time, when someone eventually needs your help, you're going to be the one in the back of their mind that springs straight to front of mind, because they've been following you for so long.

And like we said, it comes back to what you said, John, about these subliminal messages, because they keep seeing you consistently day in day out, you're giving useful help. You're probably going to be the one that they reach out to it, whether it's via cool message or whatever it is. So, so help me like, the thought leader thing, I, you know, struck a nerve there, I can't I actually can't even stand it when you know, people introduce me on their, you know, webinar or something like that as a thought leader. I'm like, cut it out. I'm not like, I'm just a sales rep who's, who's trying things out and, and sharing what I found works and what doesn't work and those types of things. So the, the thought leader piece of this, I think it's a huge challenge.

And I talked about this with my team all the time, you know, Morgan and James and, and the whole squad where we have to be very careful because when we talk about brand, right, we're selling to sales reps, but we're selling brands, you know, to, to, you know, building your brand and personal brand and prospecting to a audience that is hungry and thirsty for that type of content. So it is very easy for us to say, Hey, build your brand because I'm in sales. So, and I'm, it's like, I, I sell crack and I'm a crackhead and I sell it to crackheads. You know what I mean? So it's not really that hard for me to, to do that, but you got a 23, 24, 25 year old kid who's now an SDR and selling to selling security solutions to CISOs.

And for them to sit there and put out tips and ideas on like to the security, when they are nowhere near an industry expert, like I could see a lot of them being like, look, Sam, that sounds like they say to me, John, that sounds great, man. But I'm going to embarrass myself if I put out content thinking that I'm the smart kid out there and sharing tips. So what is your suggestion for that kid on how they move, they start moving in that direction, um, without being kind of fake it till you make it. Cause that's another thing I can't stand is fake it till you make it. No, don't fake it till you make it like try to figure it out along the way. And, and, you know, but don't fake it because people see through that really, really easily.

Yeah. Great question. Um, so I completely agree. You've got to know, you've got to know your product, the service inside out. So hopefully you've been, you've been properly trained on exactly what you do. Um, and then one, one idea, which, which I've done before is to actually utilize conversations that you've had with prospective clients, perhaps existing customers, and that can give you great ideas for content. Cool. So let me tell you a quick story. Um, so the, a few months back, I had a conversation with a cyber security professional and they came to us, um, perhaps I can't remember which channel it was, whether it was cool or email or LinkedIn. Anyway, he wanted help with, in our case, any websites.

We were chatting about why he wanted to do it. Um, the fact that he didn't want to rely on recruitment agencies anymore to give him work, or, um, he wanted to get everything inbound through his website. So that way he was cutting out the recruitment fees and he was getting everything straight to him and X, Y, Z. Um, so he told me that his stay rate was about, I don't know, a grand and a half. Anyway, we went through all the, the, the current status, where he wanted to get to what he was working towards and his end goals, um, gave him a quote for the website at the end over the phone. And he said, well, Sam, that's really, really expensive. And I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, you've quoted me several grand for this website.

And, um, it's just, just going to be too much. I said, well, you said to me, you needed to get inbound leads. You said to me that a job, um, alone for one day was worth a grand and a half. I'm confused. What's the issue. And then he just started laughing. He was like, yeah, you've got me do. So I utilize that story into a LinkedIn post and it got really good engagement. I think it got me a couple of leads off that itself. So utilize the actual conversations you have, whether that's with your colleagues, whether that's with your prospects, whoever it may be, that can be one form of genuine content that you can put out there. Um, and then when to, to get to the more advanced tips and tricks, putting out videos that can be useful for your idle audience.

Yes. That's going to take a bit more knowledge in the field. And that's probably something you're going to have to earn over time, or perhaps something you're going to have to speak to your peers about, um, which is, which there's nothing wrong. Perhaps your senior leadership, perhaps your colleagues that know, know the products a bit more than yourself, you can chat to them. They can give you ideas. You can say, look, what are some unusual, um, things about what we do that is perhaps different to our competition. How do we help people in other ways? Um, have you got any client success stories or case studies you can share with me that I can then utilize in my content. So just having conversation with your team as well is another good idea.

I like that. Yeah. And, and actually a couple of things that, cause I always say you don't have to be the content creator. You have to be the content curator, right? Because look, it, it, I think it's something like less than 1% of people on LinkedIn actually create content. Most other people either share or, or, or consume. And so what I did early on was I just followed people who are smarter than me in my field and, and who are senior to me and knew more than me and I would consume their content, but then I would share it with my context, right? So I would say, Hey, really interesting article here by so-and-so my key takeaways were X, Y, Z. Um, what do you think? You know, that type of stuff.

And I kind of joke where you be because with that approach, um, you don't have to work too hard at this because if you focus on learning first, right? If you focus on that education, I want to learn first, there's the core benefit, right? And then when you learn something, you share it, then you're starting to build your brand in your, in your, like you said, in a genuine way. So there's that where, you know, if you're in CISO, like what I would recommend to a kid who's selling into CISOs is go set up a feedly account, right? RSS aggregator and go find the top 10 CISOs who are posting content about what it's like to be a CISO, right? Follow them, read their articles, read that article, and then share it out there and be like, Hey, super.

And because then you're learning and sharing and building and adding value all at the same time. Agreed. And you can go one deeper than that. Um, so to add to that point, you can even look in your LinkedIn feed, perhaps use the search facility, and then maybe hashtags that are relevant to the industry or search terms that relevant to the industry, then bring up the contacts that are actually, um, filter it to content filter, maybe latest 24 hours or last few days. And the people that are actually posting insights related to what your, um, your product or service is, as long as their comment, as long as their posts are half decent, put comments on there. So say, that's a really interesting take, but I have, have you considered this?

Have you thought about this? So you're commenting on people that are already getting decent traction and engagement on LinkedIn, and then your posts are going to be seen. So do five or 10 of those a day. You'll soon start to get more engagement on your own profile. And as long as your, your profile on LinkedIn is geared up like a landing page to, to hook leads, then that's, that's going to be another way to get yourself out there. Absolutely. And, and what you're doing there also for people that don't know is when you comment on somebody else's page, put some insights into it, right? Don't just say, hey, great post or whatever it is. Cause LinkedIn does not, that, that does not benefit anybody on LinkedIn.

The, I think LinkedIn's algorithm has now changed where the, what they promote most is time on post. So the amount of time you spend on the post is what boosts it up, right? So if you want to actually get noticed by a CISO or something like that, post an insightful comment on there and then ask a question, be like, Hey, that was really interesting. Kind of, I, this is kind of my take on that. What do you think of this? And try to create that dialogue on that post. Don't share their post. People share their posts. Like when anybody takes one of my posts and share it, I feel, I'm like, I feel bad. Cause I'm like, Hey, thanks. But I would have much rather had you go on my post and comment on there because that was going to help me out more.

So, you know, I think people have this false perception that, Oh, let me share John's post and that's going to help them out. You're commenting on my post helps out more. Yeah, exactly. Like, like you said, John, put together something that's well thought out. It's relevant to what they've posted, put your own opinion, your own spin on it, and then ask the question back. So it creates a conversation and create some dialogue and it will show up in everyone else's feed. And not only that people that don't know that see your post will then think this is someone that's half sensible. They know what they're talking about. And over time it's going to build that trust element. The LinkedIn algorithm changes weekly, daily, you know, like monthly at a bare minimum.

I mean, all of a sudden it's weird, you know, I'll be, we'll be posting like crazy, whatever. And all of a sudden somebody will be ping me and say, Hey, John, this is the first post I've seen from you in a month. And I'm like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, what? Like I've been posting crazy shit for the past month here. And they're like, well, I haven't seen you in my feed. And it's because they switched up how that, you know, and, and trying to game it. I think that's, there there's a fine line between behind, you know, gaming the system, if you will, and really looking at the data and trying to follow those trends versus what I'm always about with Gary V same here is, you know, just post good shit. You know what I mean?

Like regardless of whether it's a text post or a video or whatever it is, if you post value, if you post insightful things, talk the algorithm. Okay. Cause that's what matters. And I think if you get too hooked up on that, oh my God, my text posts got, you know, 32% higher. So let me just do those. You're going to start to angle it towards that type of content, which is going to limit your creativity. Yeah. I think the only thing you've got to think, John is would, before you hit post or hit submit, would this be genuinely useful for one of my adult customers? So is what I'm putting out actually going to be of use, whether it's only one tip, whether it's only one insight, are they going to find it slightly interesting if so put out and every now and then the odd personal post isn't bad because it shows you're an actual person and it gives people another angle of angle of you.

For example, if you're only ever putting out written content, text posts, and every now and then you put out a video, at least someone can see you're not a robot. They can actually get a feel for how you sound, for what you look like, your, your interests. And it just, just gives people that, that extra edge that might then encourage them to reach out to you. Yeah. And, and, and actually there's, there's another, what I think is an extremely unutilized, easy way to create content to your ICP, which is exactly what we're doing here. Podcasts. Like the, the, even if I was a 22 year old kid, not knowing what I know now, what I'm, what I would do is I would set up my own mini little podcast here and go try to see if I could get executives that I'm prospecting to, or just in that field to come on and educate me and have me ask questions.

Because then obviously you don't want to bait and switch, get them on and then pitch them on something that would be disastrous. But if I get you, Sam, you're a CISO in whatever. And I, Hey Sam, I got this mini little podcast here. You know, I I'd love to have you on, you know, whatever, get you on and then ask you, Hey, what does CISOs think about? Like when selling the CISOs, first of all, you're going to learn a shitload with that. Second of all, you're going to be able to cut up those little pieces of content, whether it's audio or video and share those things out there of, Hey, I just talked to. And so what you're going to do is you're going to help build that CISOs brands, but you're also going to add value to the audience and you're going to learn a shitload and it's super easy to do.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like you say, John, it's a complete win-win. And I know you've had the guys over at sweet fish media on the show. So we're up on about it too much, but I wish I started my podcast earlier. I started almost a year ago, but you learn so much. I mean, the advantages to it is it's so much easier than asking people for a demo or a discovery call because everyone likes talking about themselves. You're literally saying, look, can I spend 20, 30 minutes with you talking about yourself? And 99% of the time people would say yes, because they're on it that you'd want them to come on your show. They know you're going to repurpose the content and they know it's going to give them promotion as well as yourself.

And then like you say, you'll learn a ton because you can literally ask them anything you want, whether it's related to your industry, their industry, and so on. And it gives you a bunch of content to put out, whether you put on YouTube, podcast channels, LinkedIn, various other social channels, and you can shop it up to your heart's content. All right, everyone. There's some great notes in there about positive impressions and how marketing can play with sales instead of against them and vice versa. We should all be working together to better the buying experience for our prospects and improve process and structure within our own organizations. Don't forget to send me your sales wins at james@jbarrows.com to be highlighted on next week's show.

Today, I'm pleased to highlight David Haxby with over 70% success rate by hitting up active users on LinkedIn instead of sending random connection requests. This method has caused an increase in his response rates and his network has grown extensively since he took on this after joining JB sales on demand. You can subscribe like David did by heading over to on demand.jbarrows.com and join our ranks. Be more than what you are by investing in yourself, your skills, and your customers' experiences with you. Sign up today and we'll see you there. Yeah, I just think there's so many little things that you, going back to thinking like a marketer, right? I mean, for me, I wish, I think we timed our podcast really well because we started doing a sales podcast before.

There was a lot of business podcasts and a lot of, right? But we started ours as a pure sales, this is it, right? And it exploded. But it was almost like this default thing because I was doing these Facebook, you know, make it happen Mondays. And I was like bringing people on and it was supposed to be for my audience to engage and all that other stuff. But you know, the engagement was there, but it wasn't really growing. So I said, fuck it. And one of my teammates came and said, John, we got to have a podcast. I'm like, Jesus Christ. Oh, you know, how many fucking more things do I got to do here? I'm on Instagram, I'm on Snapchat, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on doing all, I got to actually do my job one of these days, right?

And they were, and so I was like, you know what, just take these interviews that I'm doing and just rip the audio and throw it on a podcast and see what happens. And all of a sudden became our biggest, like, without question, our most popular avenue for content. And so to your point, I wish like a little bit sooner, maybe, but I also think that reps, forget about the company should start thinking about it a little bit more as their own personal brands. Definitely. Yeah. So even if even if you're not necessarily comfortable, you don't have the time to do a full on podcast, you could even do something more simple, like a simple zoom interview, a simple video interview, whatever tool you want to use, whether it's Skype, Google Hangouts, and then put that on YouTube, chop it up, put it on social, you don't need to spend tons and tons of time on it.

If you have got a bit more time, a bit more resources, yes, do a podcast. And like you say, it's, it's not just giving you really useful information that will help you grow, help you learn, help you get better at your job. But it's also giving you a form of content to put out that then helps other people trust you more and over time build your personal brand and help might help you get more inbound opportunities for the long term. Exactly. And by the way, I keep talking about that 22 year old kid, right? Who's just getting started. I'm also talking to the 50 year old sales rep who's been out there forever and now is panicking because they are sitting at home. And what they used to rely on is face to face, you know, grabbing, you know, bringing the office manager, some donuts and grabbing lunch or playing golf or whatever.

And now they're sitting home going, holy shit. Well, they have such a wealth of knowledge in that space that they absolutely should be getting stuff out there. So, so what are some easy ways? Let's talk to that person for a minute here, that 50, 55 year old, you know, Gen X or above who's sitting there saying, look, that's all for these kids out there these days. Like I don't get this whole social shit. This thing is just not my thing. Right? So how would you even suggest they get started? Understand they probably get it. They probably understand that the value of brand and all these other things, but they're scared shitless to put themselves out there or don't even know where to start. Yeah, sure thing.

So it's, it's a great point. So I would probably say this, um, the chances are, if you just rely on, on calling, if you just rely on email, the traditional methods, like we said earlier, you're probably going to be replaced by AI or a machine in a few years time, your job, perhaps better. So if you're not looking at a differentiator, then you're not going to stand out. You're not going to keep your job or if you're a business owner, then you're going to start struggling. So you need to think about content. You need to perhaps think about one channel to start with, and then perhaps increase that over time. So whether that's LinkedIn, whether that's creating content via LinkedIn and connecting with your idle prospects there and engaging on their posts and putting out useful content, whether that's starting a podcast, which is obviously like we say, a bit of upfront work, then over time, you've only got to do one or two a week, and then it's just recording it.

And once, once you earn a bit of money from your job, or once you've got a bit saved and you can always pay someone else a few bucks to sort that out and produce that for you, whether it's doing simple zoom interviews over Skype with your idle customer, and then like we say, chopping those up, whether it's, and likewise, you can use that for a YouTube series, which you can reproduce, or whether it's starting your own email list, which is a tip I learned from a guest on my show, which is actually really useful. So again, it takes a little bit of upfront work to create the email templates. But then all the prospects or existing clients you speak to, you can put ask them with their permission, of course, put them into your email list.

So even if someone doesn't want to do business with you today, so for example, you're looking to get a deal over the line, and they say, look, Sam, look, John, I'm not quite ready to do this deal yet. Can we pick up in one month's time? You say, okay, no problem. Can I can add you to my email list, though? I put out a useful email and every link to give you useful insights all around the services we provide. And there might be a few tips and tricks that help you do your job better. Chances are, they're going to say yes. So if you can put something like that, it's a great way to stay top of mind with your customers or people you've recently spoke to, or people you've spoken to on LinkedIn. And yeah, just all of these ways, really a long term strategies to keep the main focus is to keep you top of mind, and get a trickle of inbound leads flowing on top of the outbound activity of doing so.

If you are in your 50s, if you are a more senior rep, think about which channel of those sounds best to begin with. And then go all in on that. And then over time, perhaps expand to the others, because if not, your chances are you could be replaced in a few years time. 100%. And I think that's, that's an underutilized mini get for a lot of reps. Forget about like, look, if you want to start your own, I think that's fantastic. But I remember back in, you know, 2000, when I started our first company, my first company, one of the things we, you know, nobody, there weren't a ton of like, you know, email newsletters, as much as content, content marketing hadn't exploded at that point. And we created this mini little I had our CTO do it, we did outsourced IT services.

And I just had him once we blocked it off on his calendar for an hour a week, where he would just write down some helpful things, whatever. And as a sales rep, what I would do is, I'd call you, hey, Sam, what's up? You know, we do outsource IT services, blah, blah, blah. And you'd be like, look, John, this sounds great. But right, call me back in six months, my mini get was, hey, hey, would you mind if we just put you on our email list, right? You can you can cancel at any time, whatever. Yeah, sure, no problem. And there was that impression. So I didn't have to now call and touch base every couple of months, because I knew at least our name, Thrive Networks, Thrive Networks, Thrive Networks.

And I can't tell you how many opportunities I got two, three, four years later, from people being like, you know what, John, you met with me three years ago, you met with me four years ago, whatever it was. And we were just not in a position. But we've been getting that email every single week from you guys. And you know what, it's been really valuable and really helpful. So now we're ready. And I think if you could do that from a company perspective, you got to make sure that I think the challenge there with with the rep with the company is, what does that newsletter look like? And is it really valuable? Or is it a marketing, like, you know, sales, basically a sales pitch every single time, because it's that the if that's the case, it'll do more on than good.

But if it is filled with very useful tactical things that they can do without even engaging with you, I think that's where you can get more people and again, the nurture part of it. Yeah, I think that's a good point, John. So perhaps if you are doing the email from yourself, and you're not experienced in doing these kind of things, perhaps get the rest of your team, your colleagues to check it out to make sure they actually agree with you that it is providing useful insights. And it's not just click here to book a demo, click here to book a call, I really want to sell to you. So actually giving them something useful, whether it's recent blog posts, whether you put together a video, whether it's some insightful thoughts, a case study, so a mix of nice valuable stuff.

And like you say, to go back to the point, it's yeah, getting those touch points across. So whether it's a prospect that's perhaps put you on the back burner for now, connect with them on LinkedIn. So then daily, they're seeing the content and your front of mind, add them to your newsletter, perhaps point them to your YouTube channel, if you've got one. So this way, they're constantly reminded about you subliminally, and then when they need your help, you're the one they cool. And there's another mini thing that I don't think any reps really do. I think maybe one percent of reps I know do this, whereas literally every single conversation, good or bad, that they have with anybody, they should just put it as part of their process to immediately connect with that person on LinkedIn if they haven't already.

So like, Sam, I cold call you and yeah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, you know, John sounds cool, but whatever, man, like, we're just, we don't need training, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah. Okay, no problem, Sam. Thanks so much, man. Right after I get off the phone, Sam, thanks so much for taking my call. I understand that you're not, I'd love to stay connected with you moving forward here, right? Just do that. First of all, the acceptance rate on that is like 90%, right? Because you just did it. They just know you and they're like, all right, fine. But then to your point, sublimatively, if you, if you, then if you do that and you start posting, I mean, think about how fast you could grow your following is if all you did every day was every phone call you made or every email you got back from a prospect, you immediately hit them up and connected with them on LinkedIn with a nice little personalized message.

You would grow thousands of followers or connections a month. And therefore, if you started creating content that put the impressions there, all of a sudden that snowball effect is just going to just go rolling downhill eventually. Yeah, too. Right. And then the content that you put out, if you see that a prospect that you've spoken to a little while back then engages on that content and you see, perhaps they've liked it. They've commented on it. Perhaps you could then direct message them or give them a call and just say, look, I just saw you commented on my how to do X, Y, and Z video or how to do X, Y, and Z post. I wonder what you're doing about this in your organization or wonder how you're tackling this, um, this issue in your company or what made you type that?

Because that's really interesting. The other day I was speaking to someone else over at this Acme Corp about this problem. How are you facing this? So striking up the content that they've engaged with to start a conversation is a really powerful way to use inbound to generate outbound. I get at least three to five meetings a month from that exact thing. So I put the content out there. I see who's engaging with it. I then say, okay, there's a prospect that I had. I will then comment, Hey, thanks for the comment. You know, maybe ask him a question and then DM them and say, Hey, uh, so what I, my process here is, um, you know, when I have a follow-up activity, like two or three months out from somebody who said, John, you know, follow me in a few months, whatever.

Literally the first thing that I do is I go to LinkedIn. First of all, see if they're still there. Cause these days you don't know. Uh, and then I look at their activity and like more, more, I start with the posts, like, did they post anything to see if I can, you know, see what they're putting out there. But I also look at the activity and if any of them have engaged with any of my content, I it's, it's such a green light. And, you know, I had this deal that was so dead. There was like, literally I lost the deal. Right. And then COVID hit and all this stuff happened. And I wrote a post on how AEs should be prospecting now more than ever, and they should not rely on marketing or SDRs or any of that stuff.

And, uh, that lead who turned me down, shared my post about, she's like, totally agree with this, dah, dah, dah, dah. And all I did was ping her back. I was like, Hey, thanks so much for sharing my post. You know, have you guys gotten to the point yet where, and she was like, you know what, John, as a matter of fact, we have let's re-engage. I was like, all right, cool. Yeah, exactly. I've had a similar situation. Actually, I've had a situation where I actually physically lost a deal. And then I think it was two or three months later that they, they actually messaged me and they said, look, Sam, I didn't, to be honest, I didn't like the way you approached, um, the, the first conversation and the way that you're pushing too hard for the sale, but I've seen your posts over the last two, three months.

I can see you actually know what you're talking about. You're passionate about it and you're providing useful insights. So I'd love to pick up the conversation again, if you're open to it. So it can work both ways. You can use it for your outbound approach. And like you said, you can actually check, check people's activity. If they're engaging on your posts and it's somebody you spoke to previously, or they fit your idle customer profile, then you can send them a message or go one better and send them a voice message or personalized video message. So you really stand out from the crowd and you're going to likely spark a reply. Um, or they might come inbound because they've, they've seen you daily.

So yeah, you've got two bites of the cherry. Let's finish on this one. I'd love your opinion on this, which is the future of the SDR role. And, um, I'm going to preface it with, I personally believe because of what you had said earlier, as far as the artificial intelligence and the tools that are out there and those types of things, I actually think the SDR role is going to fold up far more under marketing and operations than it is under sales. That doesn't mean it's not going to provide an avenue for them to go into sales. But I think that the SDR of the future is going to be a data analyst and, and somebody who can kind of look at all the insights right through, through intent data and artificial intelligence and web scraping tools and, and, and fold up under marketing for account based, real account based marketing that then turn the AEs back into full cycle sales reps because they will be getting either really good leads at, you know, MQLs or warm up the account so much that that AE can make a phone call and there's recognition there.

So that's kind of my theory and what I'm watching right now. Where do you see, and I know it's going to be dependent on industry and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, but where do you see the SDR role evolving to in the next two to five years? Yeah. Like we said, it's possible that it might not be there. However, I think your, your idea is great. I was also talking to Scott Barker a little while back and we said there might be a role for dedicated social sellers. So people that specialize in using LinkedIn or what other channels that the prospects hang out on and specifically using these platforms to generate inbound leads daily through their content or reach out with video voice, whatever channel they want to do it, whatever form they want to do it to generate the meetings.

And then whether they handle those leads to the sales executives, whether they keep them themselves would be up to the organization. So that's, that's one interesting. Yeah. Well, it also, it also leads real quick. It also leads to kind of my, my prediction or theory here that companies, marketers, marketing companies are going to, or companies with marketing are going to have to get very comfortable, um, allowing individuals within their organization to represent their brand. And I think you're going to see in the next two to five years, the advent of, or the expansion of the chief evangelist role where it's literally somebody like, you know, Sam Dunning. So not web choice, right. But Sam Dunning represents web choice, right?

And it doesn't necessarily have to be the CEO or the founder. It can be somebody else because people just don't trust corporate brands anymore. They trust the people within those brands. And so if you talk about that SDR role as kind of that mini social marketer role, branded brand ambassador, basically to drive value and whatever it is, is I think they're going to move up the stream to, to get it, take over on some of those roles in the next few years here. Yeah, exactly. And like you say, I mean, this is going off on a bit of tangent, but most of the time when people come inbound anyway, they've done so much research before they actually reach out to you. They've checked out your company on LinkedIn.

They've probably checked out some of your reps on LinkedIn. They've checked you out on review sites like G2 crowd or good firms or whatever review site you use. And they've obviously done a Google search. They've looked at your competition and they've done all that before they've even filled out your form. So they're so clued up. So yeah, if you've got evangelists in your company, they're actually putting out useful, insightful content and helping your prospects get better at their day to day, then you're going to be one step ahead of the curve because you've done that. To go back to your original point. Yeah, I think that's probably going to be spot on. There probably are going to be roles that in between SDRs, marketers and data analysts that can actually understand the channels that the prospects hang out on.

So they're not wasting time on channels that might not be as effective. They've got AI for those channels, whether that's cool and email and so on. And then they can actually just tap into the channels that are more manual intensive work and then just revolve around those. So it's going to be interesting to see. Well, yeah, I mean, you talk about that, you know, I mean, I think it was what Challenger Sale corporate executive board came out with that a long time ago with with Challenger saying, hey, by the time somebody comes to us, they're already, you know, 60, 70, whatever the number is. And I just want to make sure that everybody's clear on that data, because I think it gets way overused is that's for an inbound.

That's not an outbound. People aren't, you know, outbound, you're creating the need inbound, they've have it. But I trained G2 crowd last year, and they said that their website is the top 200th most trafficked website on the internet. And so you're so a B2B review website is the top 200. I mean, you're talking Amazon, Google, you got all these huge sites and a B2B review website. So if companies aren't paying attention to that, because there comes intent data too, right? Because now it's somebody searching on G2 for sales training, I get a I get a hey, john, somebody over at web choice is actually searching for sales training, you might there's your account based marketing, there's your warm lead, right?

And it's not just because they download a white paper anymore, because white paper doesn't show intent, right? White paper is just I thought it was a cool white paper, I have fucking zero interest in your business. Don't get me wrong. It's an it's a mini, mini, mini open door there. But intent when somebody actually Googles and says I want sales training, and you can get alerted on that, that is absolute gold right there. Yeah. And a little micro tip is to check out G2 crowd good firms, wherever your your company puts out your reviews, or pays a sponsorship to work out what competitors are close to you, either above you or below you. And then when when you do strike a conversation with with someone, just say, Hey, what motivated you to reach out to us, rather than company X company, why companies that are near us and good firms, then that's actually giving you the data why they specifically chose you.

And you can leverage that later in your conversation. Love it. Cool. Well, what else? What else should we be thinking of in the last? You know, do we do we cover everything? Or what else? In the last few minutes here, should the reps be thinking about or paying attention to moving forward in this new world with their that we're in right now? Sure, I think the crux of it, John, is just to think long term. So whilst whilst calling whilst emailing can get quick responses to book appointments, think about a long term, because you might not stay with your company for years and years. So if you are building a strong personal brand, whether that's through your LinkedIn content, whether that's through YouTube, whether that's through a podcast, an email list or another channel, it's it's helping leads come straight to you, not just your organization.

So that means when you move to another company, you've still got that presence there. So you're still going to be front of mind, you're still going to be in front of your buyers, you're still going to be providing useful content. So when someone needs help, they don't necessarily think of the company, your name is the one that springs to mind. So that's, that's why. And like we say, it might take more effort upfront. But at the end of the day, most of us are in sales, because we want to earn more than other people, we want to earn a healthy income for ourselves or for our family. So we do have to go the extra mile. And whilst whilst yes, you can stick to nine to five, sometimes you do need to put in the extra work after hours, whether that's on a weekend, whether that's an evening, early morning.

Once you've done the upfront work, it's just a couple hours per week, and you can make it happen really. But you've got to, you've got to have the mindset, you've got to have the gap and go to do it. It's worth it. Yeah, I mean, I have, you know, 12 personal guidelines to success. And one of them is, you know, what goes around comes around. And, and I'm a big, big believer that, you know, the short term stuff that you do that, you know, if you focus on you got to focus on the short term to hit your numbers, obviously, but but if you're not, if you don't have that bifocal lens on looking at the future, and, and, and somebody, I forget who it was, I wish I could give them credit for this on this.

But they said, instead of looking at it as building your personal brand, think about it as your, your social reputation. Because if people like brand who gives a shit, like whatever, yay. But if you then if you make that transition to thinking about it as your reputation, and what people think of you, when they when they hear your name or your company, that's where you start to say, Oh, wait a minute, because my reputation is everything to me, you know what I mean, what people think I represent, as far as authenticity, or what those type of things is what I'm really trying to do. So you got to figure out how to translate that into the social atmosphere. So that's what people think of you when they when you come into their world.

Yeah, exactly. Right. You want to give the best impression that you're the go to conduct contact in your industry, in your space. So exactly when someone has a problem, you're, you're, you're the one they call, you're the one they message. And yeah, that's, that's it, man, really, that's, that's the point of it. And yeah, just just start creating, start measuring, use the tools, there's plenty of tools, like we said out there, where you can measure it. So if you're doing LinkedIn shields, shields are really good tool to do that. Don't constantly put out the same thing over and over again, because doing the same thing is going to yield the same results. So don't be afraid to jump out of your con comfort zone.

And whether that's creating video, whether that's doing a podcast, whether that's sending a video message to a prospect or an audio message, then try something new. The worst that happens, you don't get a response. Try it a few times. If it's consistent, then move on to the next thing after you've given it a good test, or if it works well, then carry on doing it. Absolutely. Awesome. It has been fun chatting. Where can people find a little bit more about you guys and then web choice and also your growth show? I appreciate it, John. So yeah, it's webchoiceuk.com. So if you're tired, if your organization is tired of doing outbound prospecting and you want a steady flow of inbound warm leads coming your way, give us a shout, webchoiceuk.com.

We basically provide digital marketing engines to give you a steady flow of warm leads for your website and your Google positioning with SEO. Otherwise, Sam's Business Growth Show, I interview two business leaders each and every week to help you grow your business, increase your sales and make best use of marketing. That's Sam's Business Growth Show. I love it. Awesome, man. Well, I appreciate it. Hopefully, everybody out there got as much value out of this and at least a couple of nuggets here to move you in that direction of really, if you haven't made that commitment yet, get over it. Because now you're sitting at home, what the fuck else are you going to do, right? So start focusing on your brand and your reputation, but do it your way so it can be authentic and also do it where your audience is.

If your audience is on LinkedIn, then go on LinkedIn. But if they're not, go to Twitter. If they're not, go to Facebook, whatever. Go find out where they are and start really putting yourself out there to at least ask questions and move in that direction. Awesome. Well, thank you all very much. Like I say at the end of all these podcasts here, go out and make somebody smile today. Because even if you had a shitty day, to make somebody smile, you know you had a good day. And this world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all much, so much for listening and make it happen. All right, everybody. We know that you learned a ton from this episode and there was so much value packed in there for what it is to invest in yourself and think longer term.

Be sure and smash that subscribe button to catch every new episode of Make It Happen Mondays on a weekly basis. Don't forget to join us at ondemand.jbarrows.com where you can subscribe and stream all of JB Sales training courses, tips, webinars, recorded livecasts, Q&As, and much, much more. The journey to sales success begins with you investing in your own skills and professional development. This has been another fire episode of Make It Happen Monday, where we're focused on selling better together. See you next week, everybody.