Breaking BizDev
What does "business development" mean, anyways?
On Breaking BizDev, John Tyreman and Mark Wainwright break down, beat up, and redefine that nebulous term 'business development' for the modern professional services firm.
Subscribe to this podcast to get sales and marketing advice that you can actually put into practice right away. Whether you're an expert doer-seller, firm owner, or a dedicated sales/marketing pro, each episode will help you understand your buyers and win new business.
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Breaking BizDev
Quit Your Pitching! How NOT to do Social Selling
Before you pitch slap that prospect, listen to this episode.
John and Mark tear down some terrible 'pitch slaps' from their LinkedIn DMs and offer a better way to approach social media. Shift your social media marketing from spammy sales tactics to authentic relationship-building. Listen to this episode to learn more.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Welcome
00:59 Origins of the Pitch Slap
03:20 Social Selling
10:47 Pitch Slap Examples
19:50 A Different Way to Do Social Selling
30:48 Connect Instead of Create
35:54 Final Thoughts
Share your feedback in our listener survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8V9T6Z7
If you've ever received a 500 word cold pitch disguised as a connection request, congratulations. You've been pitch slapped. Let's have a podcast. All right. Welcome marketing directors, sales leaders, firm owners, partners, business developers, to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I'm John, and as always, I am joined by my trustee, co-host, Mark Wayne Wright.
Mark:John. Hello. Fantastic opening there. You just, you hooked them right in. I love your term that might be a new one on some people, but the pitch slap is a thing.
John:I can't take full credit for that. I am totally borrowing that from, Josh Braun. I believe he coined that, or he's the first I've heard say that, but
Mark:yeah. He's a pro.
John:it's an easy connection to make. So he may not have been the first.
Mark:totally. Yeah. this, this makes people like you and I look really bad, the folks that are actually doing really good marketing and selling out there in the world, when this stuff shows up. It just, it makes a, makes a mess of things, so it absolutely, this topic deserves to be taken out into the alley and beat up John
John:Yep. We got our baseball bats. We've got our tire irons.
Mark:Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna work it over. And it's, you know, and some of this is screamingly obvious. It's like, of course, you know, that's not what I'm gonna do. But I will tell you what I have folks that I have worked with in the past, you know, clients that, you know, when I get into the nitty gritty of'em, it's like, how did you do that outreach? It's like, well, I just sent him this random note and started talking about myself right away. And I was like, oh boy. You just did it. You did it. How did you do that? So yeah, there you go. So the pitch slap, right? So, uh, before we get too deep into it, yes, we're gonna beat up. What we refer to as social selling. We're gonna, we're gonna highlight some of the, the bad parts to it, and of course, as you would expect, we're gonna come in with some ideas of our own on how you can make it much better and how you can make it more about your prospective clients than all about you. So we're gonna talk about that today. We're gonna talk about the problems. We're gonna, we're gonna tear down some examples that you have. You know, I probably even have a couple right here, but I'm gonna focus this on you
John:They weren't hard to find.
Mark:No, they're not hard to find. Just go look in your LinkedIn, you know, message inbox. And there we are. And then we're gonna talk about a new, a new way to approach all of this. And I would be remiss without asking all of you to subscribe, rate review, et cetera, are. Little show breaking Biz dev. We've really appreciated, all the work we've done over the last two years. cranking out some, fun episodes. So yeah, dig in. We've got a fun library that all of you can, uh, hopefully find some, some value in. So that's kinda where we are. John. We're gonna talk about social selling.
John:Yep. Social selling, fantastic idea. Executed terribly so this is gonna be a ton of fun.
Mark:Yeah. And, and you know, it's on the, the marketing to selling continuum. I think a good bit of what we're gonna be talking about today is that direct. One-to-one outreach that we experience, you know, direct messages either, you know, on a social, platform or through email or whatever else it is. So from, from on my, my end of things, that tends a little bit more towards the selling end of things. So this is definitely a selling topic, but. It's, it's marketing as well. No, no doubt about it. This is this hack. This could even find its way into the messy middle. But, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's a, it's a good topic. So, let's dig into the problem, right? so, so what's the big idea here that we're gonna start to highlight?
John:We've talked about in the past, we've talked about the salesperson mindset, this persona, this like Glengarry Glen Ross, coffees for closers. This always be closing that like pervasive toxic salesperson persona that everyone just kind of defaults to, I think. And what I'd love to do is highlight that on social media and that mindset being kind of translated over. So I think like a lot of folks a little bit of confidence hiding behind a keyboard sometimes, and that adds to it a little bit too. So you've got these professionals who are in a position where they either are charged with going out and developing new business through LinkedIn or whatever, or Facebook or whatever social platform you pick. or they want to do it on their own, but they don't know how. And so it's, one of those two extremes. And so I think, like, you know, you see a lot of what you refer to as pointer sister posts. We're so excited. We're thrilled
Mark:Terrible.
John:those words just give you the, there's like nails on a chalkboard.
Mark:You see those? You see that stuff show up here?
John:Right? Yeah. You see that stuff show up in the feed and then you see all these pitches in your inbox, and we'll get to that in the tear down of that. But I think, that's the big problem is people adopt this salesperson persona and they don't know how to do social selling effectively, and so they default to these horrible tactics.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah, it's easy to identify someone who's not good at it. someone who's maybe just started at it. They have a, you know, you know, their, their boss, whoever else says, all right, go, you know, go, go send x number of messages or emails or whatever else. Just, just go, go, go,
John:I think another problem is, and this is kind of like stems from that a little bit, is you, you can't really tell if it's authentic or not.
Mark:Yeah, yeah,
John:So I've come into, like, I've seen folks on X folks on LinkedIn share the same exact story, like a year apart. And it was like just the other day I was talking to my client and he was in this situation and I helped him 10 x his in income. And you know, you, I, you know, see that it's like verbatim word for word. You can like copy and paste the post and like put it in your search bar and find it again. So it's like inauthenticity, but then it's also like. You see these CEOs who are posting on LinkedIn constantly, a lot of them are using ghost writers. A lot of'em are using VAs and and Chat GPT. So how do you know that it's real? Right? And so like that, like I think that is starting to kind of creep into the mindset of people on social media, I think. folks are getting a little bit wiser to that too. is this really that person and their expertise or am I being hoodwinked?
Mark:Agreed. Yeah. I, I, I, yeah, I wouldn't even say it's creeping in. I said it's, you know, I think it's there and it's pervasive and, you know, really trying to, trying to figure out if there's actually a person behind this or not, if they're just looking for somebody to click a link and, you know, find their way in their direction. So, yeah, that's a good one. All right. So. we need to define what social selling should be, right? We wanna like, what should it be? And you know, w what is it now? And I think we've alluded to some of that.
John:I think social selling, just like business develop, and professional services in general is about building relationships, earning trust, and then surfacing signals of demand and not pushing for a sale, but building your network, building those relationships, and when the time comes where there is a need. You are top of mind
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. That's what it, that's what it should be.
John:That's what it should be. But that's, that's not what
Mark:it ain't, it Ain't that
John:no. It's, it's become lead gen theater. It's become AI agents automating dms. It's become hello first name, when people forget to plug in the right data fields to their automated outreach, you know? So, yeah. It's just become just a, a mess.
Mark:yeah, I would agree. I get those all the time. outreach from people who are, trying to teach me how to sell. And I wrote'em back and I said, I, I actually get paid to do that.
John:I, I know how to sell and you're, you're doing it
Mark:Yeah. You, you just did it wrong.
John:Do you wanna learn how to sell?
Mark:yeah. Yeah. I'm happy to, yeah. I'll send a contract your way. So, yeah. So let's come back to that term pitch slap that you mentioned earlier. Right? So what's, what's a good example of that when
John:Oh man. It, it's like you get the connection request on LinkedIn and it says, hi, John. Hi Mark. I'm looking to connect with other professionals in the industry care to connect, and then it's just kind of like this vague. Overview, like sometimes there's a little bit of tailoring that goes along with those notes. Sometimes it's just a connection request without a note,
Mark:Harmless seems harmless.
John:seems harmless. But as soon as you click accept, like sometimes it's within minutes. But definitely within like 24 to 48 hours, you're getting a DM that is just 500 words. You have to wade through it. It's very me focused, my services, we help. And none of it is about how you are going through these challenges and are you feeling this pain? And there's no questioning, there's no like, even just like building relationships is just straight into the pitch.
Mark:Got it. All right, so there's our, there's our pitch slap, right? It, it can come up front, it can come after you connect. It can come at you a number of ways, but they all sound. Very similar. And you've got some specific examples, John, that you pulled. Did you, you pulled these from your LinkedIn, uh, messages?
John:It was not hard to find these.
Mark:no,
John:And I, I went to my LinkedIn, LinkedIn messages and then like, you can go to like, they have like focused and like other, and spam and so I went to Focused First and I, I was able to find plenty examples and then I went to like other and spam and it was just too horrendous. It's like, you know, like opening the door and seeing the too bright of a light. She's like, whoa, yeah, that, so I, I didn't even go in there for these ones. Uh, so these are the ones that made it past the spam folders, and they're still really bad. So I'm gonna, let's start with this, this first one.
Mark:Yeah.
John:Hi, first name, not even. Hi John. Hi, first
Mark:My first name,
John:I won't, le I won't say the company. I work for company where we specialize in helping European companies successfully break into the UK market. By combining demand and lead generation strategies, we build trust with decision makers, yada, yada, yada. We've worked with companies like sports tech businesses in Bulgaria and software developers in the Czech Republic. I would be happy to share more about how we've supported businesses like yours. It took, I don't know, a full paragraph before you see the word you in there.
Mark:yeah, yeah. No, this is good. So this is something that you have received. Obviously it was, you know, this was just a blanket spam junk because whoever sent this did no homework.
John:no, I'm not a European company. I'm not looking to break into the UK market.
Mark:Right. So, yeah. And yeah, so that's an easy, that's a softball, that's an easy one. It's just, uh, it was gross. It was gross. All right, so you've, you've got others. I
John:I've got more. And so I know you're thinking, John, we get those all the time. You're, you're calling out what everyone sees everywhere. And so personally for me, I just wanna call this one out because this is sensitive to me in my industry. I get this all the time. Dear sir or Madam, I am professional Apple Podcast promoter. Do you want to promote your podcast? Okay. I, I, thanks. You know, I, I get it. I get it and goes on. I will make you the best podcaster in the world. I will give you top 10 rankings. I will give you organic downloads, yada, yada. So first of all, as a podcast host, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time, and a lot of work to build an organic audience over time, those things are not given to you. It's it, and so the fact that these people are preying on podcast hosts who are, who genuinely want to grow their show, they don't know how. So if you are out there, and if you're listening to this, and if you're thinking about launching a podcast, don't fall for those hacks who say they can promise top 10 rankings, promise downloads. The audience that you need to build needs to be organic and it needs to be one-to-one. You're winning over listeners one at a time.
Mark:Yeah,
John:sorry, that was a soapbox that I just wanted to
Mark:No, it was good. There's plenty of soap boxes in this too. We're we're, we're gonna, we're gonna get to the, the next, the next kind of group of them that you mentioned here was they got off the ground. They started off initially promising, but then it just crashed and burned. You said here, so that, yeah, I, I've, before you jump in with yours, I've got. I've got one that kind of got off the ground Okay. For me. And then, and then didn't, so I got a, this is LinkedIn. Hey, mark. Got the name right. Just finished your breaking biz dev episode on proposal failures. Oh, Okay. Your take on the self-diagnosis approach to understanding client needs was impressive. Whatever episode that was, I can't recall.
John:They're off to a good start.
Mark:Many. Yeah. Second paragraph. Many professional services for service from owners prefer short clips from your podcast over listening to full episodes, especially when shared on LinkedIn. I can help you create short form content and, uh, you know, through this multiple. Multiple account, multiple channel distribution, AP approach. Wanna see how it works, right? So that's what this guy sent to me. John. I'd had enough that day. Maybe it was, maybe it was late. I was feeling a little snarky. I wrote, I responded, I responded, and I said, we literally have short and long form content on multiple channels for our Breaking Biz Dev podcast. And that's what I said. He didn't do his homework at all. He didn't know that. Oh, and I also noticed that you do short term videos. No, we do them. We do them. We get on YouTube, they're on LinkedIn. They're all over the place. So I was just feeling snarky, so I sent that back. So you have got some other ones that started off Okay. Do and then failed.
John:Yeah, I do, and I think, I, I think, first of all, I think those short, short form videos that we put out, I feel like they're, they're pretty good. And you know, they, we do a lot of'em. They're on YouTube. If you are listening to this, follow us on LinkedIn where you can find those short form videos too.
Mark Wainwright:You're listening to breaking biz dev
John Tyreman:the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,
Mark Wainwright:And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.
John Tyreman:If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts
Mark Wainwright:and now back to the show.
John:I, appreciate you going to bat for me there,
Mark:no, it's good. And I, and I, I gave this guy a little bit of a benefit of the doubt because he said he could promise me three x to five x results, and he didn't go as far as to say 10 x results because everybody's gotten one of those that says I can 10 x. I can 10 x your results. So he was, you know, hedging his bets on that one. So good for him. All right,
John:here's something that That crashed and crashed and burned. I'll give you two that that started off okay. And then crashed. Okay. So this one, and on LinkedIn, when you send dms you do you have the option to put like a subject line? It's like an email. And so for this one, the subject line was accounting services that maximize profits and accelerate growth. Okay. Like services. What's the benefit? Alright, like, let me, let me click into this. Hi John. I took a look at your profile and saw that you have an impressive track record. Okay, thanks. We know companies in your position need financial clarity and oversight in order to maximize profits and accelerate growth. We do some outstanding accounting, compliance, tax planning, and prep work that we'd love to share with you. Happy to set up a quick call. I'm sure you are. How does early next week work for you?
Mark:yeah,
John:So there's no sense of inquiry. There's like, is this something that you are dealing with? There's, there's no, like, Hey, here's our services and here's the pain point. They, they, they, he should have stopped right there and asked, is this something that you're dealing with right now? Um, instead of going for the call.
Mark:Right, right. Need to present this really good, genuine sense of curiosity right up front, rather than starting, you know, to beating your own chest immediately. So, yeah. Good. Okay. There was another one.
John:All right, this is the last one. So, uh, I got this, this pitch. Hi John. Are you interested in an analysis of your current online presence? It's complimentary requires 30 minutes and my team will review your current online profiles and give you an actionable recommendations to grow them. Okay. off to a good start. Are you interested in this analysis? It's complimentary 30 minutes, so I understand the time investment that's required. I understand that this is a free offer. Um, do you have time to review next week or the week after? Okay. I think you'll find the insights beneficial. At the very least, my company, company is a solution that optimizes yada, yada, yada executive presidents. And it goes, goes through, and here's my Calendly link. Please feel free to find some time. So I thought that they could have done without the, the whole bit about their company. I mean, I can click through to her profile and check'em out. it was just a little too much fat there.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. Crashed and burned. And you know, just the level set for everybody who's listening along with us folks, is that everybody who's listened to John and I talk these things through have said, oh yeah, I get these same things all the time and it's, they're absurd and I don't read them, or I delete them, or, or whatever else. Whether it's an email or LinkedIn message, whatever else. But here's the point we're trying to make folks, is that when we work together, you know, I even have clients who will come to me and say. Hey, I'm gonna send this email out to this potential client, and they send me the example for me to kind of like review and edit and stuff. It sounds like this stuff, they, I mean these are, these are smart individuals, it sounds like this,
John:It's the salesperson mindset just being applied.
Mark:Yeah, it's just that, that default settings. So what we're trying to do here is we're trying to say there's lots of people out there that do it. They do bad examples. These bad examples should be telling you something that you need to do it differently. You know, if. these outreach examples that we've talked about, you know, terrible examples, stuff that just people would immediately delete if you've crafted something recently that even looks a little bit like this, good luck. Right. You know, that's, that's the problem. So, so there we go. So what's the solution, John? What is the solution?
John:Well, I think the solution is applying all the concepts that we've talked about on this podcast to your social media marketing, to your social selling. If you want to categorize'em both that way to just social media in general. And I think the very first place to start is focus and understanding. Who your ideal clients are and that that's the very first place to focus. And we talked about prospecting on a past episode, right? And you mentioned, and you advocated for, a cohort based approach, right? Like pick 10 prospects over a two week period and you run'em through some sort of a light outreach campaign. and so I think that's a good way to apply focus. To social selling is number one, understanding who the profile that you're targeting, and then number two, focusing on a small cohort of individuals and go deeper on those cohort as opposed to going wide and automating outreach to hundreds or thousands of people.
Mark:Right. So research focus on your ideal client profile, that gets you much further down the road than any of these other lousy examples that we pointed out. Right. Just, getting a message in front of someone that is hyper relevant to them and their situation. Sure. That'll get you to kind of the first base, right? Yeah.
John:Ooh, I lo I like the baseball analogy. Let's run with that.
Mark:Uh oh. Okay. All
John:So, so how do you steal second then well, listen, listen to understand. And that's, that's the other part of another core concept that we've talked about on this podcast is understanding, right? And so instead of trying to sell your services and educate. Listen, observe, learn their language. You know, how do they talk about certain topics? Read their content, click through to their website for God's sakes. You know, you can go to, your prospect's profile on LinkedIn. Scroll down and. You can go to the comments, click on the comments button under activity. You can read all the comments that they make on other people's posts. Like how are they engaging and what are they saying and how are they describing those challenges. so if I like this, this quote, if you don't know what matters to them, you haven't earned the right to be in their inbox.
Mark:That's a good one. I like that. I like that. Yeah. So listen to understand, right? So we start, do some deep research and then really what we're, we're, we're, we're approaching them with a good sense of curiosity, asking questions and listening to understand. Yeah. Good, good, good. All right. What else? What else do you have here?
John:So now that now we're gonna start to emerge from below the iceberg, we're going to, like, I'm mixing, I'm mixing metaphors
Mark:A lot of metaphors. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
John:we're gonna become visible now. We're gonna start to engage with the prospects. Right. So this is where you can comment on their posts. You can, you know, tag them and you know, Hey, I thought about you on a comment, under someone else's post, Hey, this is a, you thought you might find this valuable. you know, ask good questions in comments, like, if they're posting about a certain topic and you have an either an understanding or maybe you know, somebody who does, you know, provide value, deposit value in that way. and, you know, get your prospects thinking a little bit differently or more in line with how you see a solution to that challenge or how you describe that, that problem.
Mark:Yeah. Some people out there could, could almost look at this as kind of lurking right on on LinkedIn. But I think, I think you could easily turn that in the right direction by just coming in really curious, right? Asking those good questions. Right. This, this liking and sharing and no other interaction thing might only get you so far, but I think engaging in a curious way is gonna get you,'cause there's kind of a fine line between the kind of lurking and just sort of. Paying attention, you know, sort of being, sort of engaged. So this is gonna get you to cross that line is like, you know, if you engage right? You're not coming in saying stuff, you're asking, you're coming in asking questions.
John:That's exactly right, and if you, if you focused appropriately, then you should have something relevant to say in the conversation.
Mark:yeah, yeah. Good. And then you've got this next little step here is that lo and behold, maybe that sort of conversation in the comments now turns into something more one-to-one.
John:I've seen this play out for, for in my own practices, but then also if I'm having conversations with other people online and then the, and so it's like, Hey, we had this great back and forth on this post. I appreciate your perspective. Can you explain what you meant by why? And like, take it to the next level. Like sometimes like the back and forth gets a little tired in, in, in a public forum, but you know, there may be. A way to have a more meaningful engagement in a more private setting. So you'll have to use your judgment on that one. And when it makes sense to,'cause there's value in leaving comments on someone else's posts, that's a great signal to the algorithm. So you're depositing value in that way, but maybe you can add a little bit more applied expertise and you can do that in the dms.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah, totally. And, and to come back to that baseball analogy thing, first base, second base, third base kind of thing. I think maybe at least some of you out there conceptually kinda understand what that whole thing is, is that the reality is, is that you're never gonna make it around all the bases, on LinkedIn or in dms or whatever else. It's like you're only gonna be able to advance this thing so far. and then you're gonna hopefully have a synchronous conversation where then you can truly kind of figure out if there's a good fit there, right? If we're talking this really early stuff, we're not chasing down projects and contracts and, you know, consulting engagements. We're chasing down sort of hellos, introductions, that initial stuff, right? And that's where this all comes to play. So, um, yeah, very.
John:And then leveraging kind of like the marketing aspect to generate conversations, and that's where the content comes into play in publishing. That is a slice of the pie and it's, it's important because it signals authority, it signals credibility, it signals expertise, it signals that you have perspective on certain topics.
Mark:Yeah. So some of the stuff that you're weaving into the conversations or sharing or whatever else points to some content that you have been creating on your end of things that's relevant and meaningful to them.
John:And that's, that's a really, really important part because the content that you're putting out there, those conversations that, that we were just talking about in the comments, it doesn't always have to happen on your prospects. Posts, right? Those conversations can happen through posts that you publish through your own profile or your company profile.
Mark:Yep.
John:So, uh, I mean, if you're talking about the questions that buyers actually have or the challenges that they actually are wrestling with right now in their firms, you know, chances are you're going to generate some conversations around that.
Mark:Yeah. Very good. So that's where content comes in. And people who are listening are keeping track of this, this is way more complex than just firing off some random, lame emails or direct messages on the social platform. There is, there's a ton of stuff in, there's the content creation, there's, you know, yeah. So this is not an easy, easy thing. Yeah.
John:Well, it's, it's like marketing and sales happening at the same time, and so there's, there's, there's this dance that needs to happen. There's all sorts of different slices to that pie when you think of social selling. It's really. Social media marketing, social selling, it's it's relationship building. The it, it should all be kind of viewed holistically because if you just isolate one slice of that pie, it's not going to advance the outcomes that you want. I.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and you had a, you had this, this sort of next little chunk here that's, you know, that we're nurturing this whole thing, which means that it's going, like I just said, it's gonna take time and it's not sort of a simple, easy thing, so it requires some patience, right?
John:Yes. Yeah. Like, like you said, if we're sticking with the baseball analogy, you're not you. You're not gonna hit a home run on LinkedIn. You might get lucky, maybe you get lucky. Who knows. I won't say never, but very rarely.
Mark:Yeah. Not, not at a high enough percentage to make it reliable in any sense. Right. And that's the difference here, is that Right? If it's highly unreliable or unpredictable, then it's not worth sort of, setting expectations around that.
John:So if you approach social selling, understanding that that's not going going to happen, then all of those dms that we just tore down, they all say, Hey, do you wanna book a meeting next week? Do you, here's my Calendly link, like on the first pitch.
Mark:Yeah.
John:So like if you go into the this understanding that you do need to have patience, you do need to build a relationship, then it kind of reframes your perspective to, is there a way that I can add value to this individual right now? Maybe it's making a connection to another person. Maybe it's sharing a resource or maybe it's answering a question that they were wrestling with in a public forum. That you can add applied expertise to in a private conversation.
Mark:Yeah. So it's, um, it, it, it takes, it takes some time, takes situational awareness that we've talked about in other concept areas. It takes patience. and it's, it's, you had a point here is like, you know, you have the know when you have the know when to advance or ask. Ask to move to the next step, then just be hyper aware of that rather than just assuming that someone immediately wants to schedule the meeting on your calendar Calendly link. Right. So that's, that's critical.
John:I like to think about relationships like a bank account. You need to make withdrawals or you need to make deposits into those accounts before you can make a withdrawal.
Mark:Agreed.
John:think about relationships in that sense, when you're doing social selling, if you have a chance to have a one-on-one conversation, how can you make a deposit into that relationship before you ask for a withdrawal?
Mark:Yeah. No, I think it's, I think it's good. All right. Let's, how, how, how do, how do, how do all of our friends out there actually make this thing feel like it's not just some crappy DM spam junk that they're pushing out? It doesn't make them feel icky. Right? How do we, how do we do that?
John:Yeah, you might be thinking, I'm not a creator, I'm an architect, or I'm an engineer. I'm an accountant. You know, I hate LinkedIn. I hate doing business development. I hate doing sales. Honestly, you probably don't need to create as much as you think.
Mark:Hmm.
John:And you don't need to create as much as you need to connect with other
Mark:Yeah.
John:I think 15 minutes a day can, you, can, you're a, you should be able to, within 15 minutes a day, create at least some sort of regular publishing cadence. On like a, from the marketing sense, establishing your thought leadership and authority. And that can be from recycling firm content on the blog, from your newsletter, you know, other posts that you've done, other emails that you've sent. Just taking that copy, paste, edit for the medium. So 15 minutes a day in, maybe one day is, is writing out posts. Maybe the next day that 15 minutes is looking at a list of your prospects. Really looking through their profiles and getting to understand them better.
Mark:Yeah. So, so not a lot of time, maybe, maybe some people, like 15 minutes is a lot, maybe even, you know, half an hour a week or, or, or whatever the time is. The time, frankly, is not. Critical. What is critical is some regular cadence, right? It's either daily or weekly or whatever else, some regular cadence where you're constantly coming back at it and you're practicing this, so you're getting better at it. You're not, you're not going on to LinkedIn or whatever other social media platform, just like scrolling through. Stuff, right? You're, you're, you're there for a reason and for a, a, a, a purpose and you have some intention and some focus on what you're doing. So use it as a tool. It's there, uh, and, you know, refine, focus, you know, use that sort of. 10 people sort of cohort approach when you're doing this, use this as one of your prospecting touches, right? We talked about prospecting multi-channel. This is just one channel. Don't put all your eggs in the LinkedIn basket. You know, spread your outreach across multiple channels. So that's the role that this has. and then there's some other, I mean, there's some great examples and some fantastic resources. John, I know that we try to be a good resource for people, but I know there's a ton of other stuff too.
John:Oh, the, there's, there's lots of resources on social media management, social selling. I think some good examples to go and look at, Jonathan Stark. Is a great example and he's, a leading podcast voice. Um, his Ditcher v comics are great. Um, go check out Jonathan Stark. He uses the same comic template. There's like six frames and then he just recycle, like switches out the text in each one of them to, his whole thing is he wants to beat up the hourly billing rate, and so it's all around that.
Mark:But he's, you know, people will think he's, he's only out there for, you know, self-employed solopreneurs, but he's not, he's he's really, really useful for, people even inside large organizations who just want to sort of, uh, find opportunities to do some singular activities. On their, on their own, which is really good. And you had some others listed here too?
John:Tom Fishburne is another in a, he's. He's very popular and you've probably seen some of his images out there, but he's the marketist and it's essentially like these like little like cartoon drawings, but they illustrate a like a marketing concept. And so if you're, if you wanna look at creative ways to do social media, that would be kind of another way and taking like a creative spin. But if you're looking, if you're thinking of like, okay, well how do I create an efficient way to repurpose, you know, maybe old content or to put, publish new content, you know, a podcast is a great way to do that. without a doubt, you know, taking those video clips like you mentioned earlier, mark, but even if you don't have a podcast, you know, you're, you, you've got a, an iPhone or an Android phone, you could probably take like a. Two minute selfie video talking about a certain topic. So, you know, that takes five minutes to, you know, record a video and then click publish with a quick caption. You know, you could go back, like I mentioned to your newsletter or your blog and recycle some of the copy there. So there, there's, there's a number of different ways to, approach that content creation challenge.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. I, um, you're, you are, you are right. There's plenty of content out there. You just have to find it. Probably some content that, like you said, lives on your website, lives on social media already that you can grab a hold of, you know, content creation's gotten pretty easy these days. John, like you said, you have a phone in your hand, you can make a video. So there's that. So we just beat up. Social selling, easy to do, John. It just shows up every single day and it's easy to beat up. But what's the, you know, there's, there's one big thing that's always missing, right?
John:and it's, it's called social media for a reason. The human element, just being human. And you know, mark, before we close, I just wanna, I wanna put an offer out there. If, if folks are, um, if they wanna get started with like a prospecting sequence, uh, I would be happy to do a tear down or to give you feedback on your prospecting sequence. So if you're listening to this and you want me to take a look at it, send it my way on LinkedIn. john@redcedarmarketing.com. If you've got. If you wanna send it over on email, so I'm happy to take a look
Mark:I love that. That's a, that's a, a very generous offer. Most people that are listening are like a prospecting. What? It's like, all right, we'll go back to the prospecting episode. Look at the, you listen to that first, and then that'll tie together with this social selling thing that says, oh, if I'm actually going to use social media, some social channel out there as one of the steps or multiple steps in my prospecting sequence. This episode really. Kind of hopefully retrains you on how to use that in that sequence. But yeah, the whole sequence is really important, and I'm certain that you could provide a ton of value to people who are, who are out there, um, and need some help. So, John, this is, this has been fun. Uh, until next time.
John:Until next time.
