Omer (00:10.160)
Welcome to another episode of the SaaS Podcast.
I'm your host, Omer Khan, and this is the show where I interview proven founders and industry experts who share their stories, strategies and insights to help you build, launch and grow your SaaS business.
In this episode, I talk to Bryn Tilghman, the CEO of Social Sales Link and the author of the LinkedIn Sales Playbook, a tactical guide to Social selling.
Bryn has been teaching entrepreneurs, sales teams and business leaders how to leverage LinkedIn for social selling for over a decade.
And as a former sales trainer, Bryn adopted all the traditional sales techniques and adapted them to LinkedIn.
And she guides professionals on how to become thought leaders and subject matter experts, find and engage the right targeted market, and leverage clients and networking partners for warm introductions into qualified buyers.
In this episode, you'll learn the difference between cold connecting and social proximity.
How to establish a professional LinkedIn profile that stands out, how to network and engage with existing LinkedIn connections, how to how to leverage social proximity to connect with prospects, and how to leverage content and establish thought leadership.
By the end of this episode, you'll know exactly how to use LinkedIn social selling to build authority, credibility and trust.
And you'll learn how to connect with qualified buyers.
So I hope you enjoy it.
Bryn, welcome to the show.
Brynne Tillman (01:43.290)
Oh my gosh.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm thrilled to be here.
Omer (01:47.230)
So let's start by telling people about Social Sales Link.
So that's the company you run.
What do you do?
Who do you help?
Brynne Tillman (01:56.350)
So we help B2B salespeople leverage LinkedIn to start more sales conversations.
Pretty simply, that's, that's what we do.
Omer (02:05.710)
As simple as it gets.
So tell me a little bit about, like, how did you get into the space?
How did you kind of learn to master LinkedIn and start helping other people?
Like, what was your journey that kind of got you here?
Brynne Tillman (02:20.590)
Well, thanks for asking.
You know, it really was an accident.
I had been a producer in sales and I had been a sales trainer and I really fell in love with LinkedIn when I recognized in 2008 that it wasn't just a job seeking tool, but it answered a major question problem that I had or challenge that I had, which was how do I get more client referrals for me and for my clients.
Right.
So one of the major ways that we always trained sales teams and professionals to grow their business is by getting client referrals.
But they'd ask.
We teach them to ask.
Mr. Klein, I'm so glad you've loved our services and our Products.
And you're thrilled with us.
We, the way that we've grown.
Our business has been introductions and warm referrals from our happy clients who do you know that we could meet that would benefit the same way you have?
And they always, like, kind of shrugged their shoulders and said, you know, I love to refer you.
I can't think of anyone.
And when I saw LinkedIn, it solved that problem.
Because LinkedIn allows us to filter and search our connections, connections to identify who our client knows that we want to meet before that conversation.
So that when we ask, instead of saying, who do you know?
You say, I hope you don't mind.
I notice you're connected to 18 people on LinkedIn that I'd love to have a conversation with.
Can I run these names by you?
And then he remembers six of those people.
And of the six you say on this list, is there anyone here you'd feel comfortable making an introduction for?
Me?
And that's three of them.
Now the other three, you just say, I so appreciate this introduction.
With these other three, would you be comfortable if I reach out to them directly and just mention we have this conversation?
So now all of a sudden, now you're name dropping with permission, you're getting warm introductions, and it's a game changer.
So when I saw that piece inside of LinkedIn, I decided this is all I want to do, is train people how to really leverage their social proximity, who in their world can help them gain access to their targeted buyers.
Omer (04:39.010)
Okay, so social proximity for you means being able to find and connect with new prospects through the network that you already have.
Brynne Tillman (04:52.610)
100%.
So social proximity is how close are you to your decision makers?
What is your proximity to your buyers and stakeholders?
That's how I define that.
Right.
So the ultimate social proximity is I am connected to a decision maker in a company that I want to do business with.
That is social proximity.
I am connected to them.
In the analog world, social proximity is I have lunch with that person, we play tennis together, whatever that might look like in the real world.
On LinkedIn, it starts with I am connected.
And then there are actually levels of I am connected and he knows my name, I am connected and he's seen me speak.
Right.
Like what?
There are levels of that as well, but the social proximity there is the first degree connection.
There's also social proximity.
I know someone inside of that company that might be an influencer, but is not my buyer.
Can they help me navigate?
Right.
That's also social proximity.
Another piece might be my client knows the decision maker at the company I want to do business with.
So now it's one removed in that direction.
But that's still.
This is my social proximity.
And I map out how do I get to that buyer by leveraging my network.
And it goes on and on.
There are so many different avenues to leverage, and there are different ways to treat each person in your network that can help you gain access.
Omer (06:24.610)
Got it.
I think there might be people listening to this who might be thinking, that sounds great, but I don't really have a very big network on LinkedIn or the people that I can think of that I'm connected on LinkedIn don't seem like the kind of people that would know the kind of prospects that I'm trying to find.
So does that mean what Bryn is about to tell me isn't relevant for me?
Brynne Tillman (06:52.200)
Well, the first thing is, you would be shocked.
People tell me that all the time.
I don't have the right network.
I'm connected to a ton of people I went to college with, and they're not in my industry.
Do the search, look up the company.
You are going to be blown away at who your network knows.
I'm just going to share one quick little story.
And this is from my personal experience.
I was connected to a bunch of PTA moms, right?
And my kids were in kindergarten, and at third grade, one of these PTA moms went back to work.
She went to Sungard, and it came up on my LinkedIn that Jean is at Sungard and I want to be in Sun Guard, right?
Like, that's a great opportunity.
That was a great company.
So I reached out to her on Facebook because she was a PTA mom, right, and had a conversation.
And I'm not going to go through the whole kind of.
She knew the right person.
And through social proximity, Yosemite Sungard became my client, right?
And so you just don't really know until you just need to connect with everyone in your network.
And it's not gonna be 100%, right?
If it was 100%, we'd all be bajillionaires, right?
If we could do it.
But it's gonna be a really good percentage of people in your network that know like, and trust you, that have a relationship with you, that know people.
And you can actually now look at one person inside of your network and look at everyone they know.
And there may only be two or three people.
If you're young, maybe it's your friend's dad, right?
That.
That happens to me, and that happens for Job seekers a lot, by the way, because I tell, like young folks that are coming out of college, connect with all your friends and all your friends, parents, because they're connected.
Right?
The older and the more mature that you get into, just connect with everyone you talk to, clients, coworkers, old bosses, they all have networks.
And when you connect with one person, the average person has about 485 connections.
So every time you connect with someone, assuming there's 50 overlapping, you've got 435 new people that are second degrees.
Odds are they're going to have a few people that you want to talk to.
Omer (09:17.350)
Okay, so we're going to talk about four tips for mastering social selling on LinkedIn.
So why don't we start by explaining to people what exactly is social selling?
Brynne Tillman (09:30.070)
That's a great question.
Social selling is really about leveraging online platforms to start more sales conversations or online platforms and tools to start more sales conversations.
And that's the way I look at it.
If, I mean there's so many, there's social media marketing, there's social sharing, there's content.
All of them can play a little part inside of social selling.
But the goal has to be to start more sales conversations or maybe you're there to be an influencer, to be a thought leader.
There could be lots of different things, but that's not social selling.
Social selling in my book is about starting more sales conversations by leveraging online platforms and tools.
Omer (10:12.120)
Got it.
And so when it comes to LinkedIn, what we're saying is we're going to talk about these four tips about how to get really good at social selling.
And the ultimate goal is to be able to start a sales conversation with them offline, by email, on the phone, in person, whatever that looks like.
Brynne Tillman (10:34.450)
On Zoom, I don't have.
And people laugh at me.
I'm like, I don't have a whole lot of phone calls anymore.
Like, how can you sell without phone calls?
I'm like, because they're Zoom calls.
I'm getting to know my people face to face.
It's so powerful.
Omer (10:50.050)
Now, before we get into that, and I know that you're a big advocate of social proximity, as we just talked about, what I see a lot happening is people don't do that.
They don't look through their connections to find second degree connections and make introductions that way.
What they might do is let me find, you know, a list of a thousand people who might be prospects either by searching on LinkedIn and then Cold call.
Well, yeah, or just, just make connections with.
Brynne Tillman (11:23.860)
I Call that cold connecting.
Omer (11:25.340)
Cold connecting, yeah.
So for somebody who's doing that, what are the downsides of doing that versus taking a social proximity approach to finding prospects?
Brynne Tillman (11:36.180)
So I'm about building relationships.
I'm not going to say it doesn't work.
Cold calling works if you do it enough.
Right.
Cold connecting on LinkedIn can work.
Now, if you connect and pitch, it's gonna fail.
But if you connect with the right people and you nurture them over time, it's a longer game.
If you do it right, you're connecting, you're sending insights, you create curiosity.
You start getting them to think a little bit differently about their current situation.
And when the timing is right, they'll convert.
If you do that piece right, most people that are cold connecting, they connect and they send, hey, here's how we help people.
Can we jump on a call?
And that really doesn't work much.
Not that it doesn't work at all.
And if you're doing it in mass numbers, you will see some success.
Like if you throw everything on a wall, sometimes stuff sticks.
Right.
Like, so I'm never going to say that it doesn't work, but it's a lot of effort for the return.
Same thing in my mind with cold calling, it's a lot of effort for the return.
If you spend your time leveraging your existing network, more than 50% of the people that you have either permission to name drop or make an introduction are turning into phone calls.
And you're coming in at a much higher level of credibility.
Right.
Like if my client makes an introduction to someone and they take my call, I'm coming in a much higher credibility than if I just cold connected and sent them content and even created curiosity.
I'm.
I'm not vetted yet.
Omer (13:13.830)
Right, Right.
Brynne Tillman (13:14.630)
But when you come in through an introduction or even through name dropping, there is a perception that you've been vetted.
Omer (13:21.190)
Right.
So the takeaway for me is what you're saying is social proximity is a better way to do this, to find prospects.
Because the conversion rate in terms of the number of conversations that you're going to have and customers you're going to find is probably going to be a lot higher than kind of cold connecting.
And if people were still, if they still want to do some of the cold connecting, it's.
You're not saying don't do that.
But think about it as more of the long game.
Don't connect and pitch.
Also think about if you're going to connect, how you can also nurture those connections before you Start to pitch or do whatever.
Brynne Tillman (14:03.440)
Exactly.
Omer (14:04.000)
Okay, great.
So let's jump into the four tips.
So what is tip number one?
Brynne Tillman (14:10.460)
So tip number one is really about the foundation.
So you can do all the work in the world, whether you're cold connecting or you're getting warm introductions.
And the very first thing that's going to happen is they're going to visit your profile.
And if your profile is your resume, you're not getting them excited to have a conversation.
And if our goal ultimately is to start more sales conversations, then that's the job of our profile.
So we need to move it from resume to resource.
Now, the mistake a lot of people make is they get like about 85%.
They get the concept that it can't be my resume, it's got to be a resource.
And so they take the opportunity to create a pitch deck on their profile.
And that's not a resource, people.
I'm educating them on what we do, on how we help.
That's a pitch, it's not education.
So when it starts with who we help and how we help, that's not engaging.
That doesn't get someone to say, I have to talk with that person.
Right.
I've got to talk.
So we want to make sure that our profile, it does resonate that who we help, how we help and why they should care is first and foremost in the headline.
Right.
So who do you help, how do you help, why they should care, and I can play this game with you if you want to.
Once we get that, we want to go into not telling them how we can help, actually helping, providing what I call vendor agnostic insights, content that they can use even if they never talk to us again.
We don't want to lead with our solution.
We want to lead to our solution.
We want to lead the golden nuggets of value.
And, and that creates curiosity, that creates aha moments that makes them wonder, is what I'm doing right?
Are there things I'm missing out on?
And then eventually, at one point, and not to say that we're not outbound asking for conversations, because we certainly are on the warm market, social proximity piece, but when we're connecting with people, we are leading them to our solution, we get people to raise their hand and say, you know what, we're facing that right now.
I'd like to talk.
And they know that you're going to add value, not just sell them because you've added so much value.
Omer (16:36.590)
Right?
Yeah.
I do something similar with my email list where when people join my email list they'll get a mail saying, hey, what's a problem you're currently struggling with?
And it sort of started, I started that because I really was trying to gather like market research.
What are the things that people care about?
What do they need help with?
But when people reply to that mail and they'll tell me, this is the thing I'm struggling with as much as I can with the time available, I always try to reply and I always try to ask some questions, give them clarity, maybe share a resource or something that even if I never connect with that person again, can I spend a few minutes being helpful and kind of having no agenda?
One, because kind of it puts some good out in there in the world by doing that go giver.
And secondly, it's, it's again, it's so helpful.
Just by that interaction, you start to understand more about what people are struggling with, how you can help.
And maybe, you know, sometime in the future, maybe there's a podcast episode or people are telling me, I'm struggling with LinkedIn, so let's find Bryn and get her on the show and talk about that, right?
So I think it's all good stuff.
And I think in many ways by doing that, you sort of stand out because there are a lot of people who will pitch right away.
Brynne Tillman (17:52.790)
The chances of getting someone that needs what you need right now, that knows they need it right now, it's so minute, right?
But if you are someone that is a resource in their world.
I had someone on a blog post today write something like, I'm always astonished at how much you give, right?
And I'm thinking, I don't even know who this person is, but I'm helping them.
And now I'm engaging and maybe turn into a conversation, help him further.
But the fact is, if you're giving, you said something really important is, I have no agenda.
It's just about providing resources and help.
It's the go giver mentality.
It's absolutely foundational.
You have to give as much as you possibly can.
It comes back to you.
It's a little bit of the secret.
It's all these like, you put it out that energy and it comes back, but you still have to put it out there without an agenda of it coming back.
It just happens to come back.
The other thing is you are putting yourself out there as that thought leader and subject matter expert.
Very few people can implement what they learned from your blog, but they know they learned a lot.
And when they need your solution, you're the vendor, they're Going to call right now.
I know I put out there and I hate leaving like dangly things that we can play this game.
Do you want to quickly go through the headline, how you get to that?
Omer (19:16.870)
Yeah, yeah.
So we're saying that the first tip is really about establishing a professional profile, making it clear about, you know, who you are, how you can help your prospects, and doing it in a way that is not salesy or, you know, all resource driven.
Yeah, so let's, let's just kind of break that down to sort of a few tangible, tactical things that people can headline first.
Yeah.
Brynne Tillman (19:42.320)
Okay, so let's play this so people can see how it works.
This is the best way to do it.
Who do you help play you?
Omer (19:49.440)
I help new and early stage founders of SaaS companies do what to build, launch and grow their businesses.
Brynne Tillman (19:58.640)
Okay, so the so what is sort of in there?
Right?
Like so how do you do that?
So there's, that's the middle.
So you help new early stage SaaS companies do what?
And then your so what is to build and grow the business, but what are you actually doing for them?
Omer (20:15.650)
Providing education, content, resources.
Brynne Tillman (20:22.530)
Okay, so maybe it's providing the essential resources startup and new companies need in order to build and grow.
Omer (20:35.290)
Right, right.
Brynne Tillman (20:36.410)
And so we're hitting.
They've got to see immediately how we help for them to care about.
Reading further.
Omer (20:44.650)
Got it.
Okay.
Brynne Tillman (20:46.490)
Right.
So if you can add those three elements, providing and even going deeper into what those resources are, it's great.
Now on desktop you only get 120 characters for your headline, but you can actually update it on an iPhone and you get 210.
Omer (21:05.130)
That's nice tip.
Brynne Tillman (21:06.150)
You can add more characters.
Omer (21:07.510)
Okay.
Brynne Tillman (21:08.070)
Yeah.
Omer (21:08.470)
All right, so break that down for me again.
Brynne Tillman (21:11.110)
Who you help, how you help and why they should care.
So you gave me who you help and why they should care.
Not the how originally, but we've got to have a how.
Otherwise, you know, how do you do that?
Maybe provide websites to help them?
You know, we don't, you know, so they need to understand a little bit more about the how.
Omer (21:30.710)
Right, totally.
Because I think that that's a great point because without that piece, if I say I help new early stage founders of SaaS companies build and grow their business.
Well, I could be a designer or a developer doing that.
Brynne Tillman (21:46.170)
Yeah, so you need the how you do that for them to go, oh, interesting.
Okay, right now, you know, and connect with that.
So that's the first element.
The second element is your about summary.
Now I'm not, I could go all day on this.
And so I'm going to go really fast and move down your about summary.
And this is very controversial.
And in every class I ever have, I have people raise their hand and go, I do like that.
And by the end they love it.
So I'm just saying initially this is not about you.
This is about helping them.
This is about being a resource.
I look at the about summary like a blog post.
Omer (22:23.680)
Okay.
Brynne Tillman (22:24.560)
So I start with, here is the challenge that startup SaaS companies face.
So what's the challenge?
What are they facing right now?
Why is it so hard to grow their business?
Omer (22:36.510)
Could be a number of factors.
It could be around.
They're unclear about their target market, they're struggling with their messaging, they haven't found the right solution for the right market.
Brynne Tillman (22:48.510)
That's perfect.
Right?
That's where we start.
Here are the three or five major challenges that hold startup SaaS or founders from scaling their business.
Okay.
Then you go into insights.
So what are three areas or the five areas a startup SaaS founder needs to evaluate to see if his company is positioned or has a block to scale is their scaling is blocked.
You give them those insights, not about how you can help them.
Clearly all those things are what you can help them with.
But I want them to go, I didn't think of that.
I never saw that block.
Right.
And so you create these curiosity moments, these aha moments, these.
How come nobody told me about these moments?
Omer (23:36.260)
So it's almost like you're providing them sort of a high level roadmap.
These are the things that you need to accomplish in order to get to this next place you need to be at.
Brynne Tillman (23:47.060)
Yes.
And then one or two sentences about how you help.
That's it.
And a call to action.
So if you are concerned that you are not positioned to grow to the way you originally planned, let's chat.
Whether or not we decide to work together, our call will bring great insights for you that will be helpful.
Right.
Here's my calendar link.
Pick a time that works for you.
We're going to use that a lot and that concept a lot throughout all of our prospecting.
But let's think about this.
We've got a lot of reps will say to me, I don't know why they won't get on a 15 minute call, but they won't get on a 15 minute call because they know you're going to pitch them.
Why would any.
Your offer has to be worth more than their 15 minutes for them to take it.
So if we don't provide enough Value or we look like we're pitching the offer is their 15 minutes is way more valuable than the time to hear you pitch.
But if your offer is, I'm going to provide additional insights that can help you at least identify your specific blocks to scaling the way you originally planned.
Is that worth 15 minutes?
Heck, yeah.
Omer (25:04.990)
Right?
Brynne Tillman (25:06.110)
Oh, my God.
If you can help me, I know that I don't have to pay you to help me find my problem.
Now you're going to help me find my problem.
Our job in discovery is to help them find their problem.
Right?
So now we go.
Okay, so now we see what the problem is.
Now, how you bridge that to a sales conversation is this reminds me a lot of a client that we worked with a couple of years ago that was in the same situation.
Can I share with you what we did for them?
Omer (25:33.010)
Okay, well, don't go into that part yet because we want to kind of follow the tips here.
Right.
Brynne Tillman (25:40.450)
I went on a tangent.
Omer (25:41.890)
Okay, so can we wrap up on that?
The first one is really about establishing a professional profile, and it's really about how you use the headline, how you use the about summary, and how you think about this in terms of helping versus pitching.
Brynne Tillman (25:59.270)
Yes.
Omer (25:59.830)
Okay, great.
So the second tip is around networking and engaging with existing connections.
So tell me about that.
What does that involve?
Brynne Tillman (26:10.790)
Well, so really new and existing.
So new is still existing.
How are you welcoming your new connections when they accept your connection request or when you accept theirs?
Are you providing value?
Are you making an impact?
So I think the biggest problem with LinkedIn is we connect and forget.
That's more frequent than connect and pitch.
Right.
People are.
They're connecting with their ideal buyers or ideal stakeholders or strategic partners, and they don't even know it because they haven't started a conversation.
To me, that's like walking up to someone in a networking room, shaking their hand, handing them your card and walking away.
That's not going to be a good cornerstone for building a business relationship.
So for me, I want to slow down the number of connections that I get, make sure that they're more appropriate, and start first, more conversations online, taking it ultimately offline.
Omer (27:10.730)
Got it.
Okay.
Brynne Tillman (27:12.650)
Yeah.
So that's the first part.
That's your new connections.
Second part is we've now already connected with all these people and ignored them.
How do we fix that?
We can search in LinkedIn our existing connections in a few ways.
Number one, you can download all of your connections into an Excel spreadsheet and review them.
You can go into the search bar at the top on LinkedIn.
Choose people from the dropdown that takes you into an advanced search area.
Choose all filters and then there's relationship on the left hand side.
So you choose first degree relationship.
Figure out all your filters.
So maybe I want first degree relationship in my city and I only want to see the CEOs.
So now I can build a list of all the CEOs inside and then SAS technology is an industry that you can pick from.
Right.
So there are lots of ways to drill down to get an exact list of the people you're connected to that you should be engaging.
So now we have our list and most people go, now what?
Right.
Well, there's two ways to approach this.
Either way, you have to be generous with content.
One is if you have content.
You know, as a CEO of a SaaS company, I thought I'd share this little video or this blog post that we wrote.
It's on this topic.
I'm not sure if this is an area you're exploring or an area you're struggling with, but a lot of my clients have found it to be quite helpful.
Love to hear your feedback.
Right.
Just reengage them with insight.
P.S.
if you have any questions specific to your environment, I'm always happy to jump on a call.
Here's a link.
Omer (28:55.100)
And so this is a message you're sending an individual, not something you're just posting for the world.
Brynne Tillman (29:01.360)
Correct.
You're going and you're targeting first degree messages.
Omer (29:04.560)
Got it.
Brynne Tillman (29:05.160)
Okay.
Exactly.
So that's re engaging like those people that we forgot.
The other thing, if you're like, oh my gosh, I don't have content.
One of the best things.
So I just hit 50 this year.
So I started sales before the Internet, before email, before fax machines, and now we're even past fax.
Like, I didn't have any of that.
Right.
So what did I do?
I got the Philadelphia Business Journal.
Every city has a journal, right?
And I went through it.
And every time a CEO was mentioned, I cut it out.
I'd stick a little post, you note, congratulations.
Right.
Put my business card in and mail it to them.
Omer (29:42.650)
Nice.
Brynne Tillman (29:43.770)
Right?
Well, that's what we did, right?
Like, that's how we started conversations today.
Go find content that's out there about the industry or about their company.
Make sure it's positive.
Don't send like congratulations on your bankruptcy.
Like, make sure you're doing this right.
But you can say, hey, Joe, we've been connected sometime.
I just read this article on the amazing things your CEOs doing.
In the community.
I'm not sure if you had a chance to see it.
I wanted to get in front of you.
I cannot tell you.
The percentage has gotta be 80 to 90% of people at least respond like, oh my gosh, thank you so much.
I didn't see that.
That's not even your content.
That's their content.
Right.
So just you can Google, look at their company page.
I'm sure they shared it.
Look at their Twitter, like there is their content out there.
It is a great way to engage.
Omer (30:38.260)
Got it.
Okay.
And anything else on that point around
Brynne Tillman (30:40.900)
networking engage, those are the major pieces.
You know, I could go on and
Omer (30:44.220)
on, but yeah, well, maybe we'll do that another day.
Yeah.
Brynne Tillman (30:48.420)
So.
Omer (30:48.740)
Okay, so networking engage with new and existing connections.
We're talking about sending personal messages by building a, first of all, focusing on a targeted list of your connections.
We're sharing content, we're sending personal messages versus a lot of posting.
And if we don't have enough content, then just be smart about searching for what you can already find around that.
And it could be something that they're mentioned in the news.
It could be something that they posted on LinkedIn or some other social media platform that you can use to start a conversation.
Brynne Tillman (31:27.600)
Absolutely.
Nailed it.
Omer (31:29.840)
Great.
Okay, so the third tip is around leveraging social proximity.
Brynne Tillman (31:37.200)
I know we sort of, we've kind of covered this, so sorry to jump in.
But ultimately this is the most important piece in my opinion on LinkedIn.
So repeating it is not a bad thing.
So social proximity.
So how do we do this?
So I just talked about how do you search your first degree connections to re engage?
We can do that exact same search with second degree connections.
So now we can find all the CEOs in my city that are in technology that I share a connection with.
You might get thousands and thousands of people.
And this is where people that say, I'm not connected to the right people, this is like the first moment, Aha moment.
They go, oh my God, gosh, I can't believe I'm this close to so many people.
And there's lots of ways to do this.
We can get on a phone with our shared connection.
We can ask for an introduction.
We can just ask, hey, I'm looking.
I'd love to speak with someone you're connected to.
How well do you know them?
Like start a conversation to see how well.
And sometimes you have five shared connections and three of them don't remember, but one of them is his next door neighbor.
Omer (32:41.540)
Right.
Brynne Tillman (32:42.280)
You just don't know Right.
And so that's the outreach.
That way you can do the same search of a particular company.
So you have a list of companies that you're trying to get into.
You can search that company, click on all employees, click on second degree connections and boom, you've got n firsts, right?
You want to see.
But second degree, that's that social proximity work for you.
All the people that can help you get to all the stakeholders inside a specific company.
You could do the same thing with alumni.
If you have a strong alumni, you can see who's working in your alumni.
You may not be connected, they may have graduated 20 years before you, but if they're an influencer inside of a company that you're trying to get into, you can just reach out and say, hey, you know, both of us graduated from, you know, state college and I noticed you're at ABC company high on my list that I'm trying to get in there.
Would you be willing to just jump on a call with me, maybe help me with some direction and how to go about it?
Alumni, huge amount of people say, yeah, of course, you're my alumni.
I'm going to do that.
Right?
So that social, there's 150 different ways to do this.
The concept that I want everyone to walk away with is, is you need to leverage your network that is absolutely essential to social selling.
To social selling in a way that exponentially grows your business.
Omer (34:14.860)
Got it.
You know, I think there's something interesting I've seen which is a little bit sneaky, is people will send me a connection request saying, hey, thought connect.
We have a number of shared connections.
And you know, I've never sort of really consciously thought about it, but now through this conversation, there's this process that I go through in terms of number one, is, is this person going to pitch me?
That's probably the first thing that comes in because that's secondly, it's like, okay, how relevant is this person in terms of, you know, if there's somebody who's, I don't know, in the hotel industry doing catering, then probably I'd kind of struggle to figure out what the reason is that they're connecting.
But the reason you often find out that you have these shared connections is because not because they know those people, but they've been playing the game in terms of cold connecting.
And then they kind of come back and say, hey, you know, we're connected.
So I think again, what you're saying makes a lot of sense.
And if you're able to get to that connection through an introduction, that's a lot more powerful.
Brynne Tillman (35:22.450)
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I do want to talk to something you mentioned.
I think it's really important.
I don't connect with everyone.
If it's someone that it doesn't feel like it would be the right fit for my network, I will actually respond to them before connecting and simply say thank you so much for your connection request.
Typically, I only connect with people I know.
May I ask how you feel?
Found me.
And so you don't have to accept to reply.
You can reply before you accept them into your network.
So if they don't reply, they're not going to be any good in my network anyway.
Those are the people that I think that are just out cold connecting and they're not even paying attention.
So I'll respond and ignore.
If they respond back, they'll come back to the top.
Omer (36:09.800)
Got it.
Brynne Tillman (36:11.240)
That's pretty much how I handle those.
Omer (36:13.510)
Okay, now the fourth tip we talked about was leveraging content and thought leadership to attract and engage a targeted audience.
Is this kind of what we already talked about with some of the content sharing or is like what we.
I think what we talked about before was a little bit more about just sharing content, but I think this is going beyond that and positioning yourself as a thought leader.
Brynne Tillman (36:40.660)
Right.
Well, it's a hybrid.
Right.
So right now what we did was talked about one on one, sharing content.
So there's also like generally feeding your network and that's really important.
There are lots of different ways to do that.
There's curated content, there's original content, there's video.
Doing zoom interviews, man, this is some of the best content that you can share on LinkedIn.
Interviewing other people, you don't.
I mean, the podcasts are great.
I love podcasts.
I'm a little addicted.
I listen to them in the car all the time.
But not everyone needs to have a podcast to do a free zoom video in an interview.
And now you've got content.
So original content doesn't always have to be from your brain to be seen as a thought leader and a subject matter expert.
Right.
So just interviewing your clients and interviewing people inside of your company.
If you are selling something and there are subject matter experts, you may say, I'm in sales, I'm not a subject matter expert.
Interview these subject matter experts inside of your company and bring them into like 90 second clips.
You can do a whole hour and you get a ton of different content.
It doesn't have to come from your brain necessarily.
The other thing is if you're answering client questions all day long, which most of us are, record them.
They're probably little tidbits of content.
I will tell you, my best content is not a blog post anymore.
My blog posts don't do what they used to do.
My two, three best performing pieces of content, mini videos that are under 3 minutes.
Text posts that look sort of like a blog.
It's a shorter blog version of three tips and an image and PowerPoint slides that you can go through.
So maybe seven tips on each.
Like if we did four tips.
If we did something and we created a slide and each one was the basic tip, they do really well.
My blog posts don't.
The only traffic I get to my blog posts are when I send them through my newsletter.
They're not getting really social attention.
Omer (38:51.180)
Yeah, yeah, that's interesting again and I think it kind of makes sense if, if somebody is on LinkedIn and they're not there to click a link and go off to another website and spend hours freaking stuff out.
Sometimes it's just because people are bored and they're going on there and if you can give them bite sized pieces of content and value for them to consume there and then you're probably going to get more attention 100%.
Brynne Tillman (39:20.030)
So also using hashtags are really important now.
Amazing how many people are following hashtags and you can look up a hashtag and see how many followers you know.
So you share something with a hashtag.
If someone's following that hashtag, it's coming up in their newsfeed.
Now if there's dozens of content shared every minute with that hashtag, you're going to get buried.
But one mistake that people make, even the people that really understand content marketing, go, oh, there's 2 million followers.
Your stuff's gonna get buried.
There's 2 million followers doesn't mean there's 2 million pieces of content being shared.
So take a look in LinkedIn.
They may have 2 million followers under digital marketing, but then when I look through, there's only like six pieces that were shared today.
That's a phenomenal hashtag to use because so many people are following, but there's not a lot of content using it.
So that combination is kind of revolutionary.
And I'm like shocked at how many really smart marketing people say, 2 million followers, you're going to get buried.
You're not, you're going to get seen.
It's like a perfect combination.
So using those are really important.
Omer (40:33.800)
Bryn, thank you.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you for sharing so much information and your expertise with us.
Brynne Tillman (40:41.830)
Thank you.
Omer (40:42.630)
If people want to find out more about you and Social Sales Link, they can go to social sales link.com and I know the answer to this.
But if people want to connect with you, where should they go?
Brynne Tillman (40:59.270)
LinkedIn would be great.
I'm still the only Bryn Tillman, so connect with me.
And make sure you mention that you heard me on this.
This podcast, and I'll send you all kinds of fun resources.
So that'd be great.
Omer (41:12.530)
Wonderful.
Okay.
Yeah.
So let Bryn know that you heard it on the podcast.
Great.
Thanks a lot, Bryn.
It's been a pleasure.
Brynne Tillman (41:19.970)
This is so much fun.
Thank you.
Omer (41:21.730)
Cheers.
