This week on The Digital Download, we are tackling the most frustrating question in sales: "Why am I working so hard but getting no results?"

Sales teams are burning out chasing activity metrics, yet pipelines are shrinking and growth is stalling. It's the "Activity Trap," and it’s time to break free. I'm joined by my co-hosts, Adam Gray and Tim Hughes, to discuss why the way you're "working hard" is the problem. We will argue that the obsession with analogue KPIs (dials, emails) is a strategy built on "luck" and relies on tactics with a "98% failure rate". This is not a sustainable path to growth; it's a recipe for burnout.

In a "totally virtual" world, your buyers are not responding to your "hard work"; they are responding to your value. We will explore how to shift from being "busy" to being effective, moving beyond "superficial interactions" to build something that actually scales: trust.

Join us as we discuss:

* Why "activity" is the most dangerous (and laziest) KPI in modern sales.

* What is the difference between being "busy" and being "productive"?

* How do you break free from the "Activity Trap" set by managers who still believe in it?

* How does "authentic human engagement" scale better than mass emailing?

* What does the "mindset and habit change" required for modern selling actually look like?

As Co-Founders of DLA Ignite and authors of "Smarketing" , Tim and Adam are pioneers in architecting the "shift in how businesses interact and build lasting relationships". This episode is for every salesperson and leader who is tired of working hard and ready to start working smart.

We strive to make The Digital Download an interactive experience. Bring your questions. Bring your insights. Audience participation is keenly encouraged!

This week's Host was -

• Bertrand Godillot, Founder and Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Panelists included -

• Tim Hughes, Co-founder and CEO of DLA Ignite

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of DLA Ignite

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-10-31

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:02]:

Good afternoon, good morning and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of the Digital Download, the longest running weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn Live, now globally syndicated on tuning radio through IBTR, the world's number one business talk news and strategy radio network. Today on the Digital Download, we are tackling the most frustrating question in sales. Why am I working so hard but getting no results? For this very special edition, I'm joined by Tim Hughes and Adam Gray to discuss why the way you are working hard is most probably the problem. In a totally virtual world. Your buyers are not responding to your hard work, they're responding to your value. We will explore how to shift from being busy to being effective.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:07]:

Moving beyond superficial interactions to build something that actually scales trust. But before we kick off the discussion, let's go around the set and introduce everyone. While we're doing that, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them and have them join us. We strive to make the Digital Download an interactive experience, as you know, and participation is highly encouraged. So Tim, would you like to kick us off please?

Tim Hughes [00:01:37]:

Yes, welcome and my name is Tim Hughes and I'm the CEO and co founder of DLA Ignite and I'm famous for writing the book Social Selling Techniques to Influence Buyers and Change Makers.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:51]:

Excellent, Tim. Thank you for being there today. Adam.

Adam Gray [00:01:55]:

Hi everyone, I'm Adam Gray. I'm Tim's business partner and co founder of DLA Ignite. And as you press to go live, we I've got a new interface. Not seen this before. It says on air at the top.

Tim Hughes [00:02:06]:

It says on air at the top notch.

Adam Gray [00:02:08]:

Which is, which is very exciting, isn't it? So it feels like we're first time into this even though clearly this is the longest weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn Live.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:20]:

Excellent. Well, thank you, Adam. So this is just the three of us today, which is great because we're going to have the opportunity, I'm sure, to have some pretty interesting discussions. But let's start with a foundational question. So why activity is the most dangerous and probably laziest KPI in modern sales? Who wants to pick this one?

Adam Gray [00:02:46]:

Adam? Yeah, yeah. Do you know, it's funny because just this morning I was was on a call, a one hour call with someone that I know at one of the very large tech companies that in fact lasted two and a half hours. And this was one of the many things that we were that we were discussing. And anybody that tunes into our content on socials, you know, particularly on LinkedIn, will see we're often talking about this and the fact that the activity that you undertake is often the wrong activity. It's activity that is, is outdated based on thinking from 20, 30, 40 years ago. And I think what's really interesting is that often organizations, even organizations that are much younger than that, are hampered by this kind of traditional sales structure. So I'm going to measure you on how busy you are, how many calls you make, how many emails you send, how many whatever these outbound activities are, rather than measuring you on the stuff that's actually important. So how many conversations are you having, how many deals are you forecasting that you're prepared to put your hand up and say, I guarantee this is going to happen and how much revenue are you making? And this person was talking about the BDR function and I've been having a number of conversations with organizations about BDRs within their business and this particular function within the organization that this person is at.

Adam Gray [00:04:30]:

They're in public sector and they said that the BDRs are so busy sending emails that they have been that the company has been universally blocked by a number of NHS trusts for spamming them with emails. And yet it's still a KPI. How many emails am I sending? How am I going to get you onto my cadencing tool and send you these regular emails? And I think what's really interesting about that conversation that I had was that it's absolute proof that when you do the wrong thing, it's not like it doesn't make things better, it actually makes things worse for you. And we know this, you know, if you spam someone and you keep trying to call them, eventually they block you and they tell you that they don't ever want to talk to you again. And now we're seeing that at scale in this particular organization and it makes the, them hitting their corporate KPIs more difficult as time goes by.

Bertrand Godillot [00:05:36]:

But that's quite interesting because this is not a, this is not a sole case probably. I mean, every single conversation I have on that very topic is, is exactly, goes exactly into the same interaction. You know, we identify our targets, we scrap their mobile phone number, we scrap their email number and then we put that in a sequence. So, and as you said, you know, we know this is not working. So this kind of a paradox because this is not working. But this sounds, as you know, by, by the look of things, this is best practice or this is seen as best practice and actually is current practice.

Tim Hughes [00:06:26]:

But yes, it was probably, probably used by pretty much every single company in the world. And it's interesting because, you know, this is the week that the, the new report from Six Sense came out about the buying profiles. And I just had a difference of an opinion on, on LinkedIn with somebody where they said my thinking was, was in the past. And so I said, well, in the parallel universe in sales, there is this parallel universe where actually sales teams are making the number. And, and if that means, if that, if that means I'm in the past, then it's the, it's the side of history that I want to be on. Because their solution is just to basically throw more at the wall and hope it sticks, you know, send out more stuff. And, and this is all based on hope. I, you know, we, we.

Tim Hughes [00:07:21]:

So if we took look at the, if we look at the $0.06 report, the buyer is now 60, 70% of the way through the buying process before they actually talk to a salesperson. It's actually gone from 70 down to 60, but it doesn't really matter. And so the response to that is what we're going to do is the, the marketing basically have to crank up the machine and send more emails, spend more money on brand, et cetera, et cetera, hoping, because it's not a strategy, hoping that the buyer will basically say, oh look, there's Adam, he looks like a decent chap, let's put him on our short list. And it's just like you, how has this ever been? How, how has throwing at the wall and hoping it will stick ever been? Best practice? What you need is a strategy. You know when, when they say buyers are basically making a decision to buy something, who gives them that? Who, who says, have you thought about changing your payroll system? Have you thought about new finance, a new accounting system? Who does that? Somebody, Somebody in that account who has trust. And I bet it's a salesperson because they're motivated to do that. And then what they do, what the bars do is they create a short list. So this is the one that we want.

Tim Hughes [00:08:40]:

Number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And they go out, they don't get information, they validate the decision.

Adam Gray [00:08:45]:

Validate the decision they've already made validate the decision.

Tim Hughes [00:08:48]:

So, so the salesperson turns up and says, have you thought about a new payroll system? Now you, now when you're a salesperson, you turn up. If you send, make calls and send emails, the piece of people will just tell you to piss off because they're not in market. So there has to be a way of actually going to organizations, building relationships and trust, seeing that you're a strategic advisor. And then they go, yeah, new payroll system, that sounds like good ideas. Ours is really rubbish. Let's go and validate that decision. And by the way, Adam, you're number one on the list.

Adam Gray [00:09:26]:

I only wish I were, Tim.

Tim Hughes [00:09:29]:

And what. And it's like, why isn't this best practice?

Adam Gray [00:09:33]:

No, but interestingly so this, this guy has been, he's worked at a number of, of large tech organizations and he's been in the current one for a few years now. And prior to this he was at a, an organization that's famous for having an operating system and, and word processing and spreadsheet tools that many people choose to, to, to use. And he said that they used to have six monthly deal reviews. So. Sorry, six monthly statuses. So the, the senior bods from the US would fly into the UK and then there would be a whole day of people presenting their pipeline, where they are, where they're getting traction, what the like. And, and they would have a granular look down into it. And he said where he is now, everything is available on a dashboard.

Adam Gray [00:10:23]:

So what you do is you log into the dashboard and you look at it and you go, that all seems okay. And he said, and, and the problem is that previously when he was at the, the, the, the other company, he said you would start at the beginning of the year and you'd forecast half a million euros as, as your what you were going to close this year. And then when it came to the six monthly review, I'd say, Tim, how much you do, Are you still going to close half a million? And you go, yeah. Or you go, no, actually I think it's only going to be 400,000 now. Okay, well we've got a problem then because, you know, I put my neck on the block for half of them and, and those things would be addressed. He said. Now the problem with the dashboards is that it starts off at 500,000 and then tomorrow when you log in it says 480. And tomorrow, the day after when you log in, it says 460, then it says 450, then it says 410, then it says forward and gradually the number is whittled away, but it's whittled away in tiny little amounts because the focus is not on performance, the focus is on speed of reporting of this stuff.

Adam Gray [00:11:25]:

And it was interesting how the conversation with this person developed because so much of, and we Joke about best practice. As a company, we say, you know, best practice is basically following what someone else has done and has worked for them. So it's not innovating, it's not getting ahead of the curve. It's literally following in someone else's footsteps. And it, it seems to give people a lot of confidence to copy somebody else that has had success. But it, it's fundamentally A, lazy and B, ineffective as a way of doing things, you know, like the. Well, you know, we used to. And we got a call here from Chris early saying a message rather saying, how much are people failing by not picking up the phone enough as opposed to emailing.

Adam Gray [00:12:08]:

Well, picking up the phone is really, is really important. Picking up the phone is a crucial thing to do. However, cold calling is not a good thing to do. As Mark, it's not what you would.

Tim Hughes [00:12:21]:

It'S not what elite sales teams do.

Adam Gray [00:12:25]:

And the thing that's really interesting is Mark said, I'm blocking after two to three contacts. Yeah. So absolutely you're blocking after you've had two or three cold calls because it's intrusive, it's in your face. It's like somebody knocking on your door and then jamming their foot in your door and not letting you get away. So picking up the phone if the person is expecting your call and actively looking forward to your call is incredibly powerful. Calling somebody on spec is incredibly annoying and we all know it because we all get annoyed. You know, invariably when you, Tim, are trying to cold call me, it's just as I'm running out of the door to go and get a train or something. I haven't got time for this stuff.

Adam Gray [00:13:07]:

And I think that the issue is that telephone is an incredibly powerful medium. Medium. And email is an incredibly powerful medium. But cold is an incredible turn off. So cold emailing, cold calling is a really bad thing. And unfortunately one of the key metrics that so often we're charging our salespeople with is this idea that your performance and your success is going to be based on how many emails you send. And it isn't ever. It's absolutely.

Tim Hughes [00:13:38]:

Well, it's an input, it's not an output.

Adam Gray [00:13:39]:

Yeah. It's based on how many emails are read and responded to is the key thing and in order. You know, it's like every day each ofUS receives 100 emails from people promising us the magic solution to our problem. The reason that I'm going to open your email is because it's you that sent it, not because of what it says. So that's the bit that we need to address.

Bertrand Godillot [00:13:59]:

But isn't there a difference, Adam and Tim, between your install base where you can upsell, cross layers, cross sell and you can say basically the relationship already exists between Both companies in B2B so you've sold once, therefore there is may maybe you know, using, you know, keeping close to your customers basically. So calling, emailing, letting you know, newsletter, new capabilities of your products, etc. Is relevant versus so what I'm trying to say is, understand is, is there a difference between working towards your install base and acquiring new customers?

Adam Gray [00:14:50]:

You see, I, I often don't think there is until much further down the line. You know, we all worked at Oracle and if, if you got an email from somebody saying a hypertrond. I've been working very closely with John Smith who's based out of the Miami office and is in the, the, whatever, you know, the, the cloud computing area of the business. So I wondered if I could have a call with you. You'd say, I've no idea who the hell you are. I've no idea who the hell he is. Why would I want to talk to you? So, so I, I think that from that perspective, actually the fact that my company has done business with your company really doesn't hold much weight. I think that what does hold weight is if I manage to build a relationship with you and we're having a conversation and you say to me so have you ever worked with a.

Adam Gray [00:15:39]:

And I say, well actually I've worked for your company before but in a different area and here's what it is. So I'd use, use to navigating, you know, the, the sale process within your business. You might go, okay, that, that does carry some weight. And I think that this is the point, isn't it? Relationship, you know, as you always say, Tim, is, is people by people. It's a relationship based thing. You're not going to believe a word I say until you know who I am. So that's the bit that we need to address first, the knowing the who I am bit. Because no company ever sells successfully by saying, you know, we're the third best, but we're a little bit more expensive than everyone else because why would you buy that? So every company says we're the one.

Tim Hughes [00:16:21]:

And I, and I think that people are so still wedded to 1980 processes of cold calling in 1990 of sending spam emails that they don't ever pick their heads up and realize that there's something far more efficient and far more effective and so, you know, we all, the thing is, is that we all know this because, you know, I spend what, 20 minutes a day basically taking spam emails. I'm creating rules so that they, they, you know, and everything stays the same. I've got a wonderful, you know, buy my product because we're great. I've got this wonderful whatever and it's the same. I mean, I don't take cold calls because it's always the people are crooks, you know, you know, and, you know, they're, you know, they tried to sell me broadband and I said, you do realize you'd need to dig up three quarters of a mile of, of concrete and it would cost you350,000 pounds to basically relay that. They said, yeah, yeah, just sign the contract. You know, these people are crooks when they ring it. So we don't take cold calls.

Tim Hughes [00:17:26]:

So the fact of the matter is we're in this situation where those things are just no longer effective, which is why people are measuring them because they're having to do, having to make more and more and more of them. And I've told this story on here before about Vidyard where one of the people that we trained in social selling basically went there and he, he is, he is, he's known to do 35 meetings a week. 35 ICP meetings a week. He complains he hasn't got enough time for the meetings that he has with the, with, with the clients. No one else in the world does, is making that number of meetings. So when he went to video, basically he was doing 10 a week. And he said, so, so that must, that's pretty good. They said, yeah, yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:18:11]:

He said, I still get kicked because I'm not making enough phone calls and, and, and sending any enough emails. And I said, what does the rest of the sales team, what are they doing? He said, well, they, they're generally, if they're making one a week, doing really well. So here we have a situation where this person's doing 10. He, this other person is doing one. So the person with who's doing one rings him up and says, what cadence are you using? But cadence, like, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is about going out and having, building relationships and trust and, and I can get 10 meetings a week. But they never said, you know, the guy that's doing 10 meetings a week, why don't we see what he's doing? And in the end, basically he said, I can't be bothered with this. And then they shut the whole European Arm of Vidyard because of the fact that they were measuring the wrong thing.

Adam Gray [00:19:00]:

But you said about the Sixth Sense report coming out and I wrote a post about this a few days ago. And so the sixth sense report has come out 2025 outlying how buy behavior has changed. Which follows on the sixth sense report from 2024 showing that biobehavior has changed following CEB and Gartner and sixth sense and WPP and, and WPWC and, and all of these people saying the buyer has moved. The buyers moved.

Tim Hughes [00:19:36]:

The McKinsey say it. Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:19:38]:

Yeah. Completely different way to how they behaved even a decade. So to, to prove how, how valid that is, we train people on spin selling from 1998, Medic from 1990, Solution selling from 1994, Medpic from 1996, Snap from 2010 and Challenger from 2011, all of which have elements that are still relevant but largely are outmoded because how people choose to spend their time, how they do their research and how they discover things is completely different now. So what we need is, we need to have a behavior and a, a strategy which reflects how people behave today, not how they behaved 40 years ago. Because it just doesn't make any sense. Does.

Tim Hughes [00:20:30]:

Doesn't. Sorry.

Bertrand Godillot [00:20:32]:

Come in from flu. High flow care is an essential component of trust. Trading relationships for cadence doesn't build care. No trust.

Adam Gray [00:20:43]:

No.

Bertrand Godillot [00:20:44]:

I think we all agree with that. But now if you are a sales rep and you, you kind of trapped into that environment where you're forced to do things, how can you break free? Basically.

Tim Hughes [00:20:59]:

It reminds me of the, the Queen video with.

Adam Gray [00:21:03]:

Yes. Hoovering.

Tim Hughes [00:21:04]:

Eddie Murphy with the hoover going, I want to break free. Sorry.

Adam Gray [00:21:08]:

Yeah, no, but, but I mean you're, you're, you're joking about it, but the reality is that, that when you are being held to account for particular behaviors that are so embedded in the organization, you know, they come down from the very top, don't they? You know, we want to drive more revenue, therefore you need to make more cold calls and send more emails. And it's just, it's a ludicrous assumption. And you know, there are so many of these anomalies in sales. So you know, every salesperson wants to, to fail. Every salesperson wants to fail. Clearly that's why they go into an ultra competitive area of business because they want to fail. So what we'll do is because they're perfectly happy sitting at 80%. So what we'll do is we'll increase their quota by 30% and then if they miss it by 20%, they're going to make the number we really need them to get.

Adam Gray [00:22:02]:

You know, no. Salespeople spend all day being rebuffed and told no by people that they're trying to sell to. It's a really difficult job to do. It's really pressured and they're working absolutely flat out to try to achieve something to us. So to assume the way you get better performance is simply by ratcheting it up. Tim, you need to do 10% more cold calls next month.

Tim Hughes [00:22:23]:

It's, it's been, it's, it's the. I, I've known that for 30 years.

Adam Gray [00:22:30]:

It's just, it's, it's tragic and it trivializes the role that sales play, which is the most important role in business, because without them, nothing happens. And it also assumes that these people are lazy and they just need whipping harder, which is rarely the case.

Tim Hughes [00:22:49]:

I left an organization because they ratcheted my, they, they took my target from 1 to 2 million. I said, it's not physically possible. I said, I'm working 68 hours a week already. Yeah. I said, what, what, what do you want? And they said, no, that's, Everybody's targets go up. I said, okay, Right.

Bertrand Godillot [00:23:06]:

Why?

Adam Gray [00:23:07]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:23:09]:

They lost their top salesman.

Adam Gray [00:23:11]:

Yeah. And you know, it's, it, it's incredibly sad that, that it's so short sighted. The leadership within organizations, particularly sales leadership within organizations don't say clearly what we're doing isn't working. There's a better way of doing this.

Tim Hughes [00:23:29]:

So, Adam, got a question for you. So how do you build. So let's, you know, if, if we take Flo's comment now that care is essential a component of trust. Trading relationship for cadence doesn't build, doesn't build care nor trust. How do we build trust at scale? So how do we build pipeline at scale fast? Because that's the, that's the, the number one question that all sales leaders are wanting. They say, you know, I, I understand what you're saying, but it sounds like fluff to me. You know, I can get my sales team, they can get on the phone, they can start cranking the handle, they can start making calls, they'll start building pipeline. So how do, how do I build pipeline fast and build trust fast?

Adam Gray [00:24:17]:

Well, I, I think that, that there's quality as well as speed. So in the old days, the way that you would, you would build relationships and trust is you would physically go and meet people. You know, you would go and knock on doors, or you would go to events or you would go to networking groups or whatever it was, and you would meet your prospects and they would get to know you. And fundamentally, you know, the problem with that is that it's very costly. It's costly of my time to go to these events. It's costly of your time to go to those events. And there's a huge. There's a very small overlap in this Venn diagram that you and I will be at the same.

Adam Gray [00:24:52]:

The same event. And when we layer on top of that the fact that 19 out of every 20 buyers are not in market to buy now, it means that we get a very low strike rate from that, particularly in the modern world. But if you take that methodology about meeting people, being yourself, asking questions, smiling a lot, and you transfer that into the digital world, then you can very quickly build a network of exactly the people that you want to be talking to. So, bearing in mind that whether you like it or not, sales is, to a greater or lesser extent, a numbers game. If you look at the number of people that you're connected to on social media, let's say LinkedIn, let's say you've got 2,000 connections and probably 90% of them are in the wrong place. So for 2,000 connections, you've got 200 of them are people that you'd like to be having a conversation with today. And then you go and you connect to 100 new people every single week. By this time next year, you're going to have 5,400 people that are your ICPs, that are within your network.

Adam Gray [00:26:00]:

And along that journey, you are inevitably going to happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Bertrand Godillot [00:26:06]:

You.

Adam Gray [00:26:07]:

You put your best foot forward. And the fundamental win of this, over and above other ways of prospecting, is that if I send you an email and you read the email and you're not in market to buy, what can I do on an ongoing basis to make sure that I'm front of mind when you are ready to buy? Because if I send you an email.

Tim Hughes [00:26:28]:

Every single week, put you in a marketing nurturing group.

Adam Gray [00:26:33]:

Yeah, same.

Tim Hughes [00:26:34]:

Same as Tracy said. Tracy, who got from, joins us, said it's. It's not nurturing if there's no relationship.

Adam Gray [00:26:41]:

Exactly, Andy. And if I phone you and we have a really good conversation and I say let's keep in touch and I want to remain front of mind, there comes a point when literally I cannot make more phone calls in a week for people that I've spoken to that I want to keep in that kind of nurturing or relationship Alive. But the beauty of social is that I can do one post that talks to everybody I've connected to. So today that's 200 ICPs. This time next year is 5,400 ICPs. So I know that 10%, 5% of those people are going to be in market. So 5% of 5,400 is quite a sizable number of people that will be. I will be showing myself to them at just the right time.

Adam Gray [00:27:22]:

So the beauty of this is that when people are making the right kind of noise, you can approach them in a friendly way. And unlike calling or emailing, if they say now is not the time, it actually doesn't matter because they're already in your network and they're going to continue to be be engaged and hopefully educated and enchanted by your content on an ongoing basis. And the beauty of this is that every, every day that goes past, every week that goes past, every month that goes past, you're likely to yield more and more benefit from posting and engaging with the audience that you've already built.

Tim Hughes [00:28:00]:

So, so in effect, because it's, it's 2020, we're recording this in 2025. You're, you're, you've got a choice. You are, can stay in the analog world of cold calling and sending spam.

Adam Gray [00:28:11]:

Or going to events and all of.

Tim Hughes [00:28:13]:

That other stuff, or going or going to events and all of those analog things.

Adam Gray [00:28:17]:

Things.

Tim Hughes [00:28:17]:

Or in 2025, you could move into the digital world.

Adam Gray [00:28:22]:

Yeah. And, and it's not just the fact that you can do it from your own home office. It's the fact that every single person you add to your network is another person that might be consuming your content is another prospect that you can keep nurturing and keep educating and keep showing yourself to on an ongoing basis. So the post that you did a month ago is not going to be as valuable as the post that you do in a month's time, because your network will have been bigger and you will have engaged more people along the journey. So the reason for not doing it, there is no rationale for doing anything other than this today.

Tim Hughes [00:28:58]:

So there's a couple of things. One is, I understand that. So if we're a buyer and we're going out to market, one of the things that we're going to do is we're going to look at the people that we know like and trust.

Adam Gray [00:29:13]:

Yep.

Tim Hughes [00:29:14]:

And probably where those people are going to be front of mind. I, you know, I remember Adam. He wrote a really good article about changing payroll systems, about global payroll systems. That was really interesting. I'll go and see what he's like. He looks you up. Now, I got somebody send me a connection request this morning that said, I help CEOs create financial freedom by creating a real estate portfolio. Now, if I'd accepted his connection request and I didn't, what do you think would happen?

Adam Gray [00:29:46]:

I couldn't imagine.

Tim Hughes [00:29:48]:

Yeah, so, so it's like you've got this big, you know, there's this like, big, big sign. He's got this big sign saying, one side, I'm gonna get you in an arm lock and I'm gonna punch you until you buy something. It's like, I'm not in that game, mate. I'm. I don't want to be a piece of meat in your CRM. You know, this is, you know, and, and so. But that's, that's what most people look like. And it's got worse the people.

Tim Hughes [00:30:11]:

The, the, the worse the market gets, the more people think go, hey, this is me by myself from, but from.

Adam Gray [00:30:18]:

The buyer's perspective, right? The, the. You would rather be spammed on social than spammed by email connection request. And you don't like the look of me, you can just go, no. And you're not going to see me again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:30:39]:

On social I can block you. I know I get these people constantly going, I'm moving it up to the top of your inbox. Like, no, it's just the rules aren't working to get rid of you. Google basically allows certain amount. There's a thing. Anyway, so, so, so, so that one of the things is you're connecting to people. So if I'm in market or thinking about get. So if I.

Tim Hughes [00:31:01]:

So the really interesting thing about the Sixth Sense is that a person isn't in market until they're 7, 60, 70% of the way through the process. So if someone is 40% of the way through the process, they're validating their decision. You phone them up, they say they're not in market. Yeah. So the salesperson says that's a no. Even though they're 50 of the way through the buying process. Right.

Adam Gray [00:31:29]:

And they put. Salesperson probably won't find them again.

Tim Hughes [00:31:31]:

And the salesperson won't phone them up again because all they do is. You want to buy? No. Do you want to buy? No. Do you want to buy? Yes. Well, here's a demo. So, so, so, so that, that's one of the things. So, so when, when we. As a buyer, when I come to your.

Tim Hughes [00:31:44]:

When I've come to your LinkedIn profile trial. What happens is that I will. If I see social proof that you are interesting and you can help me, I will actually invite you into the organization because of the fact that in most cases I know that you know more than I do. So if, if I'm buying a payroll system, we probably haven't bought one for 15 years. I may have been bought in because I bought one before, but you probably know more about it than I do. I've been out of the cloud market for 10 years. There's a lot that I still. I don't know about cloud.

Tim Hughes [00:32:21]:

There's a lot I do know. But if I went back to work for Oracle, I'd have to sit there for a couple of weeks, basically listening to people like. Because they were experts and do it every day. So they would invite you in. So if you're a trusted advisor, you're then on the inside track.

Adam Gray [00:32:39]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:32:41]:

So there's a number of. So we know that we can go out and forge relationships on social. We know that people can basically come to us, but that's basically seen as. That's seen as inbound. And for many sales leaders, it's kind of not proper sales because it's inbound. So if I wanted to. So how do I. So if we're, if we're thinking about cold calling, how do we basically build and get meetings? So, so if we take.

Tim Hughes [00:33:16]:

If we take. Let's call him. Let's pick a name out of our. Jordan. If we take Jordan basically, and say he made 35 meetings a week, high quality ICP meetings a week. And we take David Pugsley, who's at Salesforce, as we've talked about for before, who's making seven high quality ICP meetings a week. How are they doing that? No fluff.

Adam Gray [00:33:43]:

Yeah. Okay, so what they're doing is they are. They have saved a search for people that are their ideal customer profile. So that will be within target companies, target territories and a target level within an organization. And they will be connecting at scale to these people, sending every one of them a connection request that says something like, hi, Tim, I found you. You look really cool. Is it all right if we connect? Nothing more than that. Because at this point, you don't know me from Adam.

Adam Gray [00:34:15]:

So for me to pitch you my products and services makes no sense at this point.

Tim Hughes [00:34:20]:

And the key thing is, is in all of this is to basically not be a threat.

Adam Gray [00:34:28]:

Exactly.

Tim Hughes [00:34:29]:

Not to be the guy that says, I help CEOs build a retail portfolio.

Adam Gray [00:34:38]:

Yeah, so.

Tim Hughes [00:34:39]:

Which is a threat to me.

Adam Gray [00:34:40]:

So once someone has connected, you send them a note that says, thanks for connecting, and nothing more than that at this stage. Because you're hoping that when you send someone a personalized connection request, they say, oh, I looked at your profile, too. That's really cool. Maybe we should have a chat. Great. So they're doing the work for you. You send them a note that says, thanks for connecting. Have a good weekend.

Adam Gray [00:34:58]:

And they say, yeah, you have a good weekend, too. You say, I will, because I'm going to do such and such this weekend. How about you? And maybe you can get them into a conversation, maybe you can't. And then you leave it for a while and you say, been connected for a little while now. I would love to have a call with you to hear what it is that you do, because it looks like it's quite interesting stuff. And then your objective is to go on the call to let them talk. Because if I say to you, hi, Tim, can I have a call please, so I can explain what it is I do that's very unattractive. If I say, hi, Tim, can I have a call with you so you can explain what it is you do that's quite, quite a lot more attractive? So basically, you get them on a call and you let them talk.

Adam Gray [00:35:36]:

And then during the course of that, that conversation, you are hoping that they will say to you, anyway, that's enough about me. Why don't you tell me what you do? Because at that point, you've earned the right to expect them to listen when you speak. Because when you pick up the. Oh, God, can I just have two minutes of your. No, no, no, I need to go. But this really is going to be super quick. You know, it's like they haven't earned the right to speak, so whatever they say isn't going to be listened to. And that's what these guys have done.

Adam Gray [00:36:02]:

And then you, you send that message out. If you're connecting to 100 people a week, all of them are your ICPs, and you say to all of them, we've been connected now for a little while. It'd be great if we could have a chat. I'd love to hear what it is you do. That's the point of networking, isn't it? 20% will say yes. So if you send out 100 a week, that's 20, 30, 40 people will say yes, I'll take a call with you. And what you're hoping for with this is not that you can maneuver somebody Into a position where they'll let you speak or maneuver somebody into a position where they'll buy or beat somebody into submission. What you're hoping is that during the course of that conversation you say to them, yeah, because this is what we do.

Adam Gray [00:36:41]:

And they go, oh my God, that's exactly what we need. Because that's the low hanging fruit. That's where, that's where the pot of gold is at the end of this particular rainbow. Yeah. You can make somebody buy something if you try hard enough. You can load it up with a series of rationales as to why they should buy your product or service. But nothing is more attractive than when somebody says to you, that sounds like it's exactly what we need. Now can you come and help us? And let's just.

Adam Gray [00:37:08]:

How we've got all of our clients. It's exactly through that process, isn't it, Percheron?

Tim Hughes [00:37:12]:

Sorry, no.

Bertrand Godillot [00:37:13]:

So what you're explaining, Adam, is, is basically what we've always done in B2B, that is engaging early. But what, what I am hearing from what you say is that you can do that digitally. Yeah, because that's kind of the big surprise.

Tim Hughes [00:37:31]:

Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:37:32]:

But I think that the key point here is that when you, when you walk into a room with a hundred people in it, you know, in a face to face environment, you walk into a room with 100 people in it, not all of those people are going to love you. Some will and some won't. And actually what you, what you are looking for is the people that will love you. The people that will say, I like, I like what you're saying here. I trust you. Can you show me how that works? Because those are the people that make good clients, people that you can bamboozle into buying from. You are always problem clients. People that say, I love this, this sounds like a really great idea.

Adam Gray [00:38:09]:

Whatever. The great idea is your new payroll system. This sounds like exactly, this is saying, it's a safe as a fortune. It will. You're quite right. Well, you, how quickly can you install it? That's, that's what every seller wants to hear. And, and that is simply about being a nice person. And you said that's what we've always done in B2B.

Adam Gray [00:38:29]:

That's what human beings have always done to, to build relationships, chat to someone and say, why don't you tell me what you do that's interesting. What do you, what do you do when you're not at work? Yeah, oddly. How did you guess?

Tim Hughes [00:38:45]:

Well, you play oddly.

Adam Gray [00:38:47]:

Indeed.

Bertrand Godillot [00:38:50]:

So that's a pretty Although that sounds, all of that sounds like, you know, maybe I'm making another statement here, but it really sounds like common sense.

Adam Gray [00:39:03]:

Well, and that's, yeah, that, that's the funny thing. So I, I don't know how many times Tim and I have presented and you now, Bertrand, have presented to organizations and said it to, to, to do this is really simple. You create a great personal brand, a great footprint on the Internet, and then you do three things. You connect to the people that you want to influence. You engage with the people that you want to influence, and then you publish content, content about them, content about what you do, and content about who you are. And you publish that on a, on a regular, ongoing basis. And never have we ever got feedback other than, well, yeah, duh, that's so straightforward and obvious. And that's the point.

Adam Gray [00:39:51]:

It's easy, but no, it's simple, but not easy.

Tim Hughes [00:39:54]:

So, so one of the things though, Adam, is that, and I, I, I was talking to an organization and they said, rc, the wait, you're wasting your time. I, to me, I said, what's that? I said, well, our CRO says that the reason why there's like a global recession, it's because all the sales people spend all their time playing on social media.

Adam Gray [00:40:18]:

Yep.

Tim Hughes [00:40:19]:

And, and I said, I agree. Yeah, absolutely. And I said, yeah. And if you stop playing on social media and actually had a process that you follow, change the outcome, a methodology where if you do this, you do this, you do this, you get an outcome. Rather than. I, I was, I watched her. There's a video about creating content that I, I'm on, I'm on a LinkedIn creator program. And they said, you must watch this program about creating content.

Tim Hughes [00:40:48]:

And in all the discussions that the person from LinkedIn, and they had, all of these customers that they were talking.

Adam Gray [00:40:53]:

To, they said, what are you trying out on LinkedIn?

Tim Hughes [00:40:56]:

And it's like, okay, I understand that you need to, it's great experimenting and trying things out, but the fact of the matter is nobody knew. And it's like, well, actually, we've been doing this for 10 years and we know exactly what you need to do. So you could actually cut out all of that playing around and just, if you just did, if you just do this, this, this and this, and, and, and, you know, it would just be so much simpler.

Adam Gray [00:41:26]:

But, but it's like, it, it's like when people talk about, you know, I've hacked the algorithm, I've worked out how to go viral, it's like, it's some Ploy. It's a Ponzi scheme, isn't it, where we're hoping that I don't have to do any work and I can get all of the results. And we know from some of the people that we've worked with as trainees over the years that something going viral delivers zero tangible benefit. Yeah, you get lots of views, but views don't pay the bills.

Tim Hughes [00:41:56]:

Yeah, we were presenting to a company today and it came up with what were the not, not views.

Adam Gray [00:42:09]:

Oh, impressions.

Tim Hughes [00:42:10]:

Impressions, yeah. And, and, and, and, and we, we explained to them the impressions. Everyone, everyone. I got 3,000, I got 300, 000 impressions. And we explained to them what an impression was and they went, that's useless. I said, yeah, yeah, it's meaningless. They said, yeah, but that's what our marketing is. Yeah, yeah, but that's, that's what our marketing agency is.

Tim Hughes [00:42:33]:

We're paying money to get impressions and say, yeah, yeah, yeah, you are.

Bertrand Godillot [00:42:36]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:42:36]:

And it's, and it's completely wasted time. Yeah, it's meaningless.

Adam Gray [00:42:42]:

Yeah, and it is, it is really interesting, isn't it? Because so many of these things, we're told these are really important. So, you know, you're told that impressions are valuable, you've told that likes are valuable. You don't. Now don't get me wrong, likes are more valuable than impressions because if it's liked by loads of people, it'll be shown to more people. But it's like, you know, it gets loads of likes. I stare at the phone, the phone doesn't ring.

Tim Hughes [00:43:10]:

Explain to everybody what an impression is.

Adam Gray [00:43:12]:

Yeah, so an impression means that your post, or part of your post has been served to a viewer. So technically it means that more than one pixel has loaded for more than 1/60 of a second. So basically, if you open LinkedIn on your phone and you just scan through as quickly as you possibly can, everything that passes through your screen counts as an impression. Even though not only have you not read the post, you haven't even noticed the post, let alone who the post is from and what the post is about. So every one of those is counter an impression. So the reality is that, that you think that a thousand impressions means that a thousand people have dwelt on your post and read it and just haven't plucked up the courage to drop a like. Maybe they have, but probably they haven't. So, so the reality of this is that what matters is something that you can actually action.

Adam Gray [00:44:15]:

So likes are only good if you choose to then message the person that has left the like saying thanks for liking my post.

Tim Hughes [00:44:25]:

So, so Carol Jean Whittington has come up with a comment which, which, which I'm going to paraphrase is that. So what are the best metrics to use? So wanna to go back to what you were saying? Likes are kind of interesting, but it, but the thing about alike is you actually know who, who's liked it with an impression. Or, or you could, if you, if you want to have a laugh, is that you just take your, your LinkedIn profile and your timeline and just go like that because everyone's just got an impression. The fact that you're looking over there and you're not actually looking to see what.

Adam Gray [00:44:58]:

So you. So your last post, Tim, it was seen because you used to work at Oracle. Your post was seen by 250 people at Oracle. How many people work at Oracle?

Tim Hughes [00:45:07]:

300,000.

Adam Gray [00:45:08]:

Okay, so which 250 views your post?

Tim Hughes [00:45:10]:

No idea.

Adam Gray [00:45:11]:

Exactly. So that's the fundamental.

Tim Hughes [00:45:14]:

So if we, so if we just. It. So if we. So, so we worked out that impressions aren't really worth anything.

Adam Gray [00:45:20]:

Yep.

Tim Hughes [00:45:22]:

So if we take likes and, and comments. What. Why are likes and comments important?

Adam Gray [00:45:29]:

Okay, so first of all, if your comment gets likes, it means that it will be shown to other people that are in the network of the person that's liked it. Because if you look at your own news feed, half of the content is from people that you're connected to and half of the content is from people you're not connected to. And you're seeing it because people you are connected to are liking it. So that means that if one of your posts is liked by somebody, it will be shown to other people that that's connected to. That's like the network effect of you getting engagement on your post. That's really good because more people are going to see this and you're much more likely to view a post if somebody that you know and like and trust has engaged with it.

Tim Hughes [00:46:11]:

So, but, but if we take, if we take likes and comments, what they're doing when they're liking and commenting is that they're saying I digitally resonate with your post. Yeah. So you have an opportunity to do, to do two things. One, if you're not connected to the people, you can basically write to them and say, hi, Carol, thanks for liking my. Thanks for coming on to the digital download. And clear. Hope you got something out of the. The show.

Tim Hughes [00:46:40]:

Hope you tune in next week. Can we connect which, which isn't threatening at all. Or if I know if I know Carol and I'm connected to Carol. What I could do is I could send her a connection request and say thanks for tuning into the download. Loved your questions that you asked. Why don't we get on a call.

Adam Gray [00:46:59]:

So I've just actually gone on to the comments and I'm really sorry. So Andrew Slessor has made loads of comments on here, some of which are fine.

Tim Hughes [00:47:07]:

Andrew's never come through.

Bertrand Godillot [00:47:08]:

No.

Adam Gray [00:47:09]:

So I've no idea why that is. So we're not ignoring you Andrew.

Tim Hughes [00:47:11]:

So Andrew, your comments don't come through and I don't know what it is.

Adam Gray [00:47:16]:

So Carol Jean has asked what's the best way to use likes comments and saves to re engage. So Tim has basically laid that out for you. If you're not connected you send them a note saying thanks for liking the post or thanks for commenting on this or this live stream. So Tim, if he's not connected to you will probably send you a note that says thanks for engaging with the post. Is it right if we connect?

Tim Hughes [00:47:37]:

I'm at 30,000 but yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:47:39]:

Okay.

Adam Gray [00:47:39]:

And the reason that you would do that is that if the person has already engaged with your post they've shown you that they like your content and therefore they're more likely to like your content because your content resonates with them.

Tim Hughes [00:47:53]:

So so working back Carol, is that is. Is that if you put out content which is threatening to me. So if so so this guy that basically sent me a connection request Today I help CEOs create their with with real estate. All his of his his profile was about how he helps CEOs basically get a with with real estate and and therefore each post is threatening because I know if I like or I comment on it what's going to happen is the next day he's going to send me a connection request. Said you liked the fact that Adam has now got a a real estate portfolio and is financially independent. How about if I make do this for you? Whereas if, if we put out a piece of content that Carol gene basically what you're doing is here I am walking the dog, here I am in the woods which is where this creates inspiration. What you're doing is that you're putting out something that's non threatening and and what and and people will engage with that like comment and then you've got that opportunity to go and have conversations with them. Now clearly you've got to have a.

Tim Hughes [00:49:05]:

There's a number of things that got to be in place. If, if my friend from from financially independent real estate starts putting out. Here I am. This is the building that creates me inspiration. I'm unlikely to, to because I've already read his LinkedIn profile and I know that he's just going to try and sell me something. So the key thing is is that on your LinkedIn profile it's not about this is what I sell and this is how great I am. This is about here I am windsurfing. This is, this is me and my family.

Tim Hughes [00:49:35]:

This is really means something to me me. What I've got to do is I've got to see something about you and, and see that as a non threatening environment. Otherwise I'm, I'm, I'm not going to engage. There are other metrics that I can work through if you, if, if you want me to pick those off. So we, we talked earlier on what you need to do in terms of the metrics. So it's from a sales perspective. You, you, you should be measuring your salespeople on how many people that they're connecting to and, and if you're, if there's anybody in sales here, if your, your sales leadership must be during account reviews or any, any review at all, you must be looking at the number of people that are connected in, in an account. And I would say in most deals if you're not connected to 10 people in the account, there's a risk.

Tim Hughes [00:50:34]:

So there's a number of connection requests that you're sending out and the percentage of that that you've been accepted. If you're not getting an acceptance rate of anything, if your acceptance rate is anything less than 60%, you have a problem because you, and, and then you need to be measuring your. Sorry, Bertrand, you're asking a question or do you want me to do this?

Bertrand Godillot [00:50:58]:

No. Yeah, well, I wanted to ask a question, but that's, that's okay. Go ahead.

Tim Hughes [00:51:02]:

Okay. So. So you, you've got an opportunity to send 200 connection requests on LinkedIn. That's ample time. If in, in terms of. So you should be sending at least 200 connection requests. You should be getting 60% of those responded to from that you should be getting at least 10 meetings. And then also what you need to be measuring is the content that you're putting out, how often you're putting content and the likes and comments that you're putting out in the content.

Tim Hughes [00:51:34]:

Because part of that will be down to if you put something out about here I am in the woods. These great. My inspiration because it's non threatening. You'll get more comments and more Likes and you've got more opportunity to go.

Adam Gray [00:51:46]:

And have conversations with people.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:52]:

Yeah. So I wanted to ask one last question before we, before we close and kind of wrap up all of this. So there is obviously a mindset change that you need to go through. Right. To move away from. I mean to go back to the basics I would say, which is, you know, we, we do business with people we like and trust. So obviously and what I'm hearing is that we can do that digitally and especially for instance using, using LinkedIn and at scale. But how do you manage your short term objective? You know, in, in knowing that you want to do that change, but you still have to pr, you still have the, the pressure has not disappeared.

Bertrand Godillot [00:52:37]:

That's what I mean.

Adam Gray [00:52:38]:

So I think with, we start.

Bertrand Godillot [00:52:41]:

How do you organize?

Adam Gray [00:52:43]:

Yeah, we're starting from a place where the, the bar is set very low. So you know, you, you, you call 100 people a day, you get through to one person. Most of those people don't want to talk to you. You send 100 emails, you get no response. So actually to, to be orders of magnitude better than that doesn't require you to get very much. Doesn't. There isn't the necessity to get very much traction to achieve that. So the person I was talking to this morning, they were talking about a BDR function in one of the organizations and there are 10 people in the BDR function and over the course of the last 12 months they set 360 opportunities, 12 of which closed.

Adam Gray [00:53:26]:

So basically one opportunity per rep per year and the amount of effort required to achieve that. And these are BDR started opportunities. So these are relatively low value opportunities. So the opportunity exists to fundamentally remap how organizations go to market, recognizing that the things that they're, the activities that they're doing and the activities that are being driven through the organization are not the, the activities that reflect the modern buyers desires. And I think that's the key thing when we're able to map one against the other. You know, buyers want a low pressure friendly educational environment where they can learn things that make their lives easier. So if you've been selling accounting systems all your life, Tim, you probably know everything there is to know about accounting systems. Therefore, anybody that works in an organization that wants to know about buying accounting systems and implementing accounting systems and what the value proposition for a good accounting system might be can talk to you whether they're going to buy your product or not.

Tim Hughes [00:54:42]:

I can whiteboard an implementation of accounting system in my sleep.

Adam Gray [00:54:45]:

Yeah. And it will be in their sleep as well. Probably not the most exciting thing.

Tim Hughes [00:54:50]:

But joking aside, supply chain, I can do that as well.

Adam Gray [00:54:53]:

But, but you know, the, the point is that, that there's a huge amount of value in talking to these people. And I think that, that you know, so often when you think about how sales is structured, you've got someone who's inexperienced, you know, someone who's young in the BDR function, who's reaching out to senior people to have a conversation with them and, and like what is the value exchange that goes on there? I'm going to phone you up. I don't really know that much about my product. I don't know that much about your business. I'm going to phone you up and I'm going to qualify you in or out. And if I qualify you in, then I'm going to get my colleague Tim, who's the guy you really should have been speaking to in the first place and he's going to speak to you. It's like what incentive is there for the buyer to take that call? Whereas if Tim phones up and says, I'm Mr. Accounting System, any questions you've got, we can have a chat about it.

Adam Gray [00:55:41]:

I think Ashley, what's the worst that can happen? 30 minutes on the phone to him, I might learn something and probably will.

Tim Hughes [00:55:49]:

I saw someone yesterday and there are a couple. When I first started selling, I sold payroll systems and I've interviewed one on my podcast. But there's somebody else who basically calling themselves a payroll influencer. And, and I, I know salespeople that don't understand why their company isn't promoting them. In effect as not, not Kim Kardashian influencers but people that, people of influence that know their stuff. Yeah, because I mean Max, who I've interviewed, I mean he knows so much about, he's, I mean he's what, he's, he's 13, he knows loads about global payroll and he's non threatening. So if you wanted to know anything about global payroll, you go to Max. Max is, you know, solopreneur.

Tim Hughes [00:56:40]:

Max will sell you consultancy and it's like, it's just an easy thing. Well, let's get Max in, come and talk to us. Because he's non threatening and he knows loads of stuff and, and he's kind of, he's Dutch and, and, and he's got a great accent and you know, and he's got a name that you can't pronounce, which is why everybody calls him Max. Well, guys, sorry, Carol, Gene, just so you know you asked about that. It's, it's you, you should, you get, you can send 200 connection requests a week. You should be getting a 60% acceptance rate. And I would say you should be getting if you 20% is a bit high. I would say if you, if you'll get 10% of those people should be accepting to go call.

Tim Hughes [00:57:24]:

So on the benchmark that we we run we would expect probably about 10% to get course and from those 10% we we would expect about a 34% next action.

Adam Gray [00:57:40]:

But I think the key thing Carol Jean is to remember that if you're not getting those kind of results it's because something in the process isn't working. So like if you're sending 200 connection requests and 60% of people aren't accepting, maybe more, maybe you might get 90%. But if you're not getting a reasonable acceptance rate on that, it's because either the way you're asking to connect is not right or the way you appear so how you've dressed, your profile is not right. And if you address those things you will get that response. And then when you're asking people for a call, if you're not getting 60% of people saying yeah, I'll take a call with you, then it's because you're not asking in the right way.

Bertrand Godillot [00:58:24]:

Gentlemen, this has been great. I hope Carol has got or answers at least first level answers.

Adam Gray [00:58:32]:

Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:58:35]:

Well thank you very much, that was great. As much as I like the discussion, we've got unfortunately to to stop here but maybe we'll take this back shortly. Next time just before we leave, we have a newsletter. Sorry Adam, you missed.

Tim Hughes [00:58:55]:

That's so much better.

Adam Gray [00:58:56]:

Everything's got water now.

Tim Hughes [00:58:57]:

Yeah, you should go. Put your hands top one.

Bertrand Godillot [00:59:01]:

You may scan the QR code on screen or visit us at digitaldownload.live/newsletter. Thank you very much gentlemen. See you next time.

Adam Gray [00:59:10]:

Thank you.

Bertrand Godillot [00:59:10]:

Bye bye.

Tim Hughes [00:59:11]:

Thanks everybody. Thanks.

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