This week on The Digital Download, we dive into the evolving landscape of social selling with our panel of experts. We'll explore how artificial intelligence is becoming an indispensable teammate for sales professionals, offering new ways to enhance productivity and effectiveness.

Join us as we discuss critical questions such as:

* How can AI assist in content creation for social selling?

* What are the best practices for “onboarding” an AI teammate?

* How do we ensure authenticity and avoid the pitfalls of AI-generated content?

* What are the ethical considerations of using AI in social selling?

* How can AI help personalize the social selling experience?

Our panel brings a wealth of experience in social selling and AI implementation. They will provide valuable insights on leveraging AI to build stronger relationships and drive better results in the world of social selling.

This week's Host was:

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

This week's panelists were:

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

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of a DLA Ignite

• Richard Jones, Director of Qure 8 Ltd, a proud DLA Ignite partner

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-05-09

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:12]:

Good afternoon, good morning, and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to a new edition of the digital download, the longest running weekly business talk show on LinkedIn live, now globally syndicated on tuning radio through IBGR, the world's number one business talk, sorry, news and strategy radio network. I will never get there. No. It's, it's, it's very challenging. But today, we are, we are exploring how artificial intelligence is becoming an indispensable teammate for sales professionals, offering new ways of enhance to enhance productivity and effectiveness with our panelists. So with no no no further ado, let's go around the set and introduce everyone. While we are doing that, why don't you in the audience ping out reach out to a friend, ping them, and have them join us? As you know, we strive to make the digital download an interactive experience, and audience participation is highly encouraged.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:20]:

So, Tim, would you like to kick us off?

Tim Hughes [00:01:22]:

Yeah. Sure. Thank you. Welcome, everybody, and I really appreciate you you watching, on this lovely sunny Friday in in London. My name is Tim Hughes. I'm the CEO and cofounder of DLM Night. I'm also famous for writing the book, Social Selling, Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:41]:

Thank you, Tim. Richard.

Richard Jones [00:01:43]:

Oh, good afternoon, everybody. Good to be here. Sunny here up in Cambridge, a relative newbie to social selling, but getting quite addicted to AI and what I believe it can do for us, in terms of, getting out there and telling a good story. So, yeah, delighted to be here and looking forward to a bit of

Tim Hughes [00:02:04]:

interesting debate.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:05]:

Excellent. Thank you, Richard. Adam.

Adam Gray [00:02:09]:

Hi, everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I'm Tim's cofounder at BLA Ignite, and, Yeah. This this should be a fascinating, conversation. It seems that every every day almost there are new ideas and new enhancements in AI, and just trying to keep abreast of those on an ongoing basis, seems like it's it's it's a challenging thing to do because things are developing so quickly for for the better, I hasten to add.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:41]:

Mhmm. Indeed. Yeah. Absolutely. And myself, Bertrand Godillot. I am the founder and managing partner of Odysseus & Co, a very proud DLA Ignite partner. So as I said, this week, we're gonna talk about, practic basically, practical ways of of of, integrating AI into social selling. And and that's my my first question, and my first question is probably gonna be for you, team.

Bertrand Godillot [00:03:11]:

Yeah. What are some of the practical ways of, integrating AI into a social selling strategy?

Tim Hughes [00:03:21]:

I think, I think in most cases, most people think straight away of content because what we do is even though probably ten years ago, content marketing wasn't a thing, it's now become something. I think it's people immediately think what I'll do is I won't write something. I'll actually get AI to create something. But I actually see and I'm using AI throughout of the whole of the the the sales process, which is you know, I use social selling through the whole of the sales process. So, recently, I got tagged on an article which was in German, and I could have gone through the whole process of of, translating the article, reading the article, and coming up with a response. I just didn't. I just fed it into, ChatGPT, and and it came over with a response in English, which is what I wanted it in. So, you know, the the the the the the the the the the ability to use it through all of the sales process, I I I think shouldn't be underestimated.

Tim Hughes [00:04:23]:

And I think that I'm gonna set say something now, which I think that we'll probably end up talking about during the the the, fifty minutes, which is it's not about prompt writing. Prompt writing is interesting and a kind of I know people have put out books recently about prompt writing in sales. It's like, yeah. That you should have bought that book out about three years ago because it's not it's not the case now because of the fact that AI has developed so much that, actually, it's an ongoing conversation. And and I some I wanna make a point that which is my my AI is you know, there's a lot of talk about the fact that AI is a, a digital twin or, a, an assistant, my AI. I mean, you know, we have conversations, not from a, what you're doing this evening conversation, but, but but in terms of, you know, forwards and back, you know, what do you how about this? What do you think about this? Have you thought about change change it to a bit like this? And and it and it and it flows through this this this conversation. So, I mean, I use AI. I use AI every day.

Tim Hughes [00:05:34]:

And, as I say, used it all the way I use it all the way through the sales process, and I think all salespeople should do that.

Bertrand Godillot [00:05:41]:

Well, that that that's certainly, a common a great stuff that, yes, you know, content is ready to play. And, and and and we have plenty of plenty of different agents, to be honest. At least, you know, that's my case, especially, because I've got these two languages. So the clearly on translations, I've got an agent.

Tim Hughes [00:06:07]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:06:08]:

Clearly, you're

Tim Hughes [00:06:09]:

I mean, my my life is is far easier than yours because all I do is I I speak in in English, whereas you have you have far more complexity because the fact that you're having to speak in English and French.

Bertrand Godillot [00:06:23]:

That's right. So, you know, so we we talked about, and we'll we'll come back to this. But, I like the idea of, and we all like the idea of, the teammate. So, that we're not we're no longer, basically talking to a tool, but we are talking to a colleague. And we're trying to make, that collaboration, fruitful, which basically means that you need to share quite a lot of yourself, to get where, where we need to be. Adam, any any any comments on this?

Adam Gray [00:06:56]:

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I I think that that your your summary there, yeah, it it's an AI teammate, but like a real teammate, you need to train the teammate. You know, if you hired somebody that didn't know anything about your business and they came in and you said, right, off you go. You need to write me some expert content about this, and you need to distill this down and give me a one page summary of things. It would be a ludicrous assumption to make. So why would the assumption be any different with AI? And I think that one of the things that that is really interesting that, you know, we as a team have all been through the process of this, as Tim said, you know, this backwards and forwards conversation with AI, asking it for what you want, coaching it on what it gives you, refining that, and then often editing it yourself and then giving it back and saying, no. This is what I meant.

Adam Gray [00:07:49]:

And it's saying, oh, right. I see what you've what you've done there. Mhmm.

Bertrand Godillot [00:07:53]:

And I

Adam Gray [00:07:53]:

think that this this process is a process where many people, fall down in how they're thinking about using AI at the moment. So it's very easy to say to, very easy to say to ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or whatever. Very easy to say, I would like you to write me a blog about this. And it can do that. Of course, it can. And often the blog will, from a content perspective, be quite good. But from a voice perspective, it won't be you. So why ask AI to write you a blog when the marketing team can write you a blog or someone else can write you a blog, none of which are ever gonna get read? So it it's about getting it to speak as if it were you, wait, from a content perspective.

Adam Gray [00:08:43]:

But as as we said at the beginning, you know, it's more than just a content creation, though, isn't it? You know, there are so many other things that you can do with with this.

Bertrand Godillot [00:08:53]:

Yeah. I agree with that. Richart, what's your,

Richard Jones [00:08:59]:

Yeah. I mean what's

Bertrand Godillot [00:09:00]:

your current point of view on this? You know, what's your experience?

Richard Jones [00:09:02]:

I I get quite addicted to it because it's like all these things. You test it out on something and you think, wow. That's that's amazing. You know? I'll I'll try something else. And then you come and get you know, I've spent several evenings where I've sat there not wanting to do anything to do with work. And sort of an hour and a half later, I'm still pumping sort of chat GPT with a few more ideas that have come off the top of my head. But what I've kinda learned is that the more the more put in, the better the content that comes out. You know, when I've, got a pretty good idea about something that really needs just to be kind of sort of, a bit more polished and perhaps sort of articulated in a more articulate way, then I'm really impressed with the how it can sort of say what I'm trying to say better than I'm currently trying to say it.

Richard Jones [00:09:58]:

And then on the other side of the coin, you know, I I see stuff that's posted, which is clearly just been regurgitated by AI. So, you know, you've had a question. Somebody's posed a question and basically told it to come back with something. And then it lose it, you know, that I I think you can see through, you know, what is sort of pure AI and what is somebody's work that has been sort of perfected by AI. That's how I see it as both a user and a consumer of the content, a user in creating it, and then you do and then sort of a recipient of the content put out.

Bertrand Godillot [00:10:40]:

And clearly, there are AI's who are actually able to re to reverse engineer AI. Yeah. Yeah. And and tell you, you know, this one is, you know, this one is % AI. This one is % human. This one is fifty fifty. I don't know. Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:10:58]:

Just So we did try this out recently to just to to share this with people. We did try this out recently internally, and we put some pieces that have been written by AI into a particular tool, and it says it was it had been written by human.

Adam Gray [00:11:12]:

But that was because we'd spent a long time coaching the AI to speak in our voices, wasn't it? True. True. So so already it was sounding like you or me, not sounding like ChatGPT or another another LLL.

Tim Hughes [00:11:26]:

And we've taken out the dashes that that that the, AI always puts in. Mhmm.

Bertrand Godillot [00:11:33]:

When when when we we coach our customers, you know, we we go through a journey of, that, and that journey starts with their profile. I was wondering whether, because sometimes we we face challenging, challenges for our customers to actually speak in their own voice about themselves. Because speaking about yourself is a you can can be a bit of a challenge.

Tim Hughes [00:12:01]:

And

Bertrand Godillot [00:12:02]:

I was wondering, you know, whether, you know, if I was just trying to, giving a few inputs to to an AI, it would actually storytell my my professional, journey. And, and I was wondering whether you had some, some inputs on that, some some views on that, maybe Adam on this.

Adam Gray [00:12:25]:

Yeah. And and and this is this is really interesting because up until very recently, I I wouldn't exactly say I've been scared of AI, but I've been very skeptical about what AI can do. In as much as well, I can do it better, and I you know, it doesn't take me a day to write a book, so why would I use AI? But as my LinkedIn profile currently stands, the headline and the about section were written by AI. I spent a long time coaching it, but but part of the the process for me was around testing whether or not this was of a competent quality or not. And I think that part of the challenge that that we have with AI is being able to divorce ourselves from what it is that we've created and look at it objectively. Because, you know, I know what I want to say. AI didn't say it in quite the way that I wanted to say it. Does that make it worse or better or just different? And, actually, the only barometer for whether something's good is what does your audience think of it.

Adam Gray [00:13:31]:

So if you write a post and your audience loves it and AI writes a post and your audience doesn't, the the truth is reflected in the data, which is, you know, the the your post was better. But if AI can be as good as you, given that you've coached it and and controlled it, and and the profile was was was a similar thing for me. But but one of the the areas that I find myself really defaulting to AI these days is in researching things. You know, with the deep research available on on Gemini, I find that it's able to pull together so many more strands than I ever would pull together for some background information. I mean, I could, but, you know, in in five minutes, it it trolls 40 websites and and compresses them all into a single narrative around this stuff. And that that's that's a week's worth of work for a person. So it it's incredibly powerful for that, I find.

Bertrand Godillot [00:14:31]:

Yeah. Clearly, clearly, the deep research capability of Gemini. And, you know, we we usually don't name tools, but this one is absolutely breathtaking, especially on competitive analysis. That is really impressive. And and, again, I I agree. I mean, the number of sources is just absolutely tremendous, and would take weeks for us to, to put together clearly. So, obviously, you know, we we can look at this from the other side of the fence and talk about authenticity. So, I think we we have always and and and you talk about not being afraid, but maybe a bit reluctant.

Bertrand Godillot [00:15:18]:

And I think that has to to to deal with, with the fear of, is it gonna be my voice or is it gonna be, you know, average, which which, by the way, statistically, is what, what I would provide Yeah. If you don't onboard it properly. And and we can also talk about onboarding. But on that, any thoughts, Richard, on authenticity? Yeah. Do you get do you get something that looks like so or sorry. Sounds like what you would what you would write?

Richard Jones [00:15:56]:

Well, interestingly enough, the the other afternoon, I had a sort of a a a kind of sort of an idea, came into my head, and I kinda sort of whacked it into, into AI. And I was, you know, absolutely astounded with, you know, how it kinda sort of quickly turned around that idea into something that was eminently plausible. And I presented to my wife and said, have a read of this. And she said, that's amazing. You know, how how did you manage to come up with something like that so quickly? And and clearly, that was through chat GPT. And I think it, you know, did quite a good job of using my turn of phrase, but that was because some of what I put in was very much using my turn of phrase. But in terms of, you know, I think it's it's a combination, I think, you know, from a research perspective, you know, I see it as being, you know, very, very useful. It it adds to what I I I put together.

Richard Jones [00:16:52]:

But I also use it from a you know, I try and have it ghost bright like me. So I want it to sound authentic. I wanted to sound like me. But I also want to edit it down so that I don't get all the sort of the fluff that kind of often dilutes the message you're trying to relay. And I think it goes back to what I said earlier. You know, I think the more you put in, the more authentic it is. You know, once you start to kinda sort of rely too much on the tool, then the authenticity gets gets lost. That would be my my view on it.

Adam Gray [00:17:29]:

So just out of interest, you you your wife was blown away when you showed her this thing. Did you tell her that it wasn't you Or did did you

Bertrand Godillot [00:17:36]:

tell her that

Richard Jones [00:17:36]:

Well, I think I think I think I think I I think she pretty quickly figured out

Tim Hughes [00:17:41]:

that. She's known me up for a long time. Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:17:44]:

Yeah.

Richard Jones [00:17:45]:

I mean, I say I'm addicted to the speed rather than to speed. Yeah. The speed with which it can turn around something that's good. But, you know, I I'm I'm I I would I would never I'm I'm never comfy to put something straight out. You know? I think you there's always something in there that to me would give the game away, you know, just the odd turn of phrase, you know, this thing. And and I do I do sometimes get a little bit disappointed, you know, sometimes stuff comes back, and I think that's you you know, and I think we had this conversation a couple of weeks ago. You know, I I have got round to the point where I do ask if it can do better than that, you know, be a bit more authentic. So, so yeah.

Richard Jones [00:18:26]:

I but it it comes down. It's it's garbage in, garbage out. You know, the more you put in in terms of trying to get it to do what you want it to do, I think the more authentic your output will

Adam Gray [00:18:38]:

be. But I think also though there's the if if you think about it as a as a tool that can do some of the donkey work that you don't have to or haven't got time to do. You know? So the challenge is that that you have a 20 page report, and you haven't got time to read the 20 page report. So you can paste it into an AI tool and say, give me a summary of this and include any key points or particularly points that relate to a, b, c, d, and it will come back with that in a page or half a page or three pages or whatever you've asked for. And I think that that the opportunity that that gives you I mean, particularly in our line. So, you know, we help organizations generate more meetings with that ideal customer profile. So whilst that's incredibly powerful for businesses, you know, so you go from having one meeting every three weeks to having three meetings a day, it creates a problem in as much as in the meet in order for the meetings to land, you have to do a bit of research. If you've got three weeks to research a customer, you've got plenty of time to do research.

Adam Gray [00:19:49]:

If you've got two hours, you haven't. So now there's a tool available to everybody to make the meeting actually land because you can understand a little bit about what the company is that you're talking to, what their challenges are. And I think that that this this idea that that in order to get the maximum from AI, we need to think outside the box and think laterally about what we're asking it to do rather than just assume, well, it can do my work for me so I can sit on the terrace and have a martini. Because actually, that's, in my experience, is not how the world works. You know, you you you actually have to be smart about how you're using this stuff.

Tim Hughes [00:20:27]:

I think I think one of the things that people still mistake or the mistake they make is that they still think that social media is a sales platform. So if you think about if you go on to LinkedIn, what people are telling you is that with AI, we can send hyper personalized emails. So everybody in the world sends hyper personalized emails. You know, I get 10 spam emails a day, and all I do is I create rules to make sure that they forever go into my way of spoken. So nobody is reading that stuff. And the feedback that I'm getting from sales leaders is this that while email marketing was shite, which is a an an a Northern English term for rubbish, It's now doesn't work. And I've and I hear of SDR teams that just don't use it anymore because it's just it there's so much it's so easy to basically, set up an AI and basically pump out shite that it was it's it just they don't do it anymore. So I think one of the things that people often think is that what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use AI to to go on to social media and pump as much shite as I can.

Tim Hughes [00:21:40]:

Because if I do that, people are gonna buy. And we go back to the most fundamentals of social media, that social media is not a sales network, it's a social network. So there was a question there, what is social selling? Now you'll get lots of different views about what social selling is. I I was with somebody yesterday, who their marketing team is posting brochures on social, and they're saying and the marketing team is standing in front up in front of sales saying that they're social selling. So so so just so just to to clarify, our definition of what social selling is, and and I have it here because I have to read it. Our definition of social selling is using your presence and behavior on social media to build influence, make connections, grow relationships, and trust, which leads to conversational conversation and commercial interaction. So when we're talking here about social selling, we're not talking about going on to social and spamming people with lots of messages and basically trying to manipulate them to basically connect with us to for us to basically immediately pitch and say, do you wanna buy a watch? Or here's a list of our products and services. Because my view and, certainly, the data shows that you'll get very little, response from that.

Tim Hughes [00:23:00]:

And the more people that do it, the the the the response will go from from from little to to to zero. So I think it I think we need to be really careful about when we talk about AI and about using it in a particular way that that that people don't actually see this as or us think that what we're telling people to do is to spam people until they're dead. Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:23:24]:

Clearly, this is not this is not our our approach here and, and nor nor our conviction. So and and that is that that actually ties extremely nicely into my next question, which is about skill sets. So if you if you are to use AI in a social selling perspective, what do you think are the skill sets that you need to acquire?

Tim Hughes [00:23:55]:

And, Well, I I, you know, I I think that in in business today, just like, you know, I I I'm old enough to remember when, the product before PowerPoint was was introduced into the into the business. You know? And and, you know, so so PowerPoint and Excel, you have to you know, to work in business, you need to understand PowerPoint and Excel and and Word. The same is that you need to understand ChatGPT. It's become part of this the toolset that we need to use. But I would still say that soft skills like an ability to actually storytell is really, really important, which is why I story told when I started, talking about that. It's, you know, that ability to tell stories because what we do is that we remember the stories, we don't remember the facts. And, you know, there's a whole bunch of things in terms of basic psychology around stories, which is, you know, which is so important to the way that we articulate, things. And and, you know, being social, I think, is a soft skill that you you have to have.

Tim Hughes [00:25:02]:

You know, when Adam and I started the business, eight and a half years ago, very few people were on social. Everybody is on social media now, and nobody ever argues that point. You know, we we used to have to justify, you know, 59% of the world's population are on social, 60% of the world. Now we just don't have to argue it because we know that you you're you're either on social or you're not taking part in in in the world as it is today. And so that's another soft skill and understanding how to have conversations. And and those conversations are no different from the way that we would walk it up work in in normal life. You know, you'd go up to somebody and say, hi. How are you doing? Have you traveled far? I get I've just the traffic was terrible today, and have conversations.

Tim Hughes [00:25:46]:

And, you know, if someone holds the door open for you, you say thank you and stuff like that. Your normal everyday things are still relevant on digital just as much as it is on analog.

Adam Gray [00:25:55]:

Well, more so. More so. Because I I I think that, you know, the the challenge is that the people that have spam called and and and that's always the the the challenge, isn't it? In the old days, before the days of email, there was a limit to how many letters you could send to people because there was

Tim Hughes [00:26:14]:

It cost to the stamp.

Adam Gray [00:26:15]:

Yeah. Cost to print it, cost to envelope it, cost time to do that, and cost to to post it, which meant that you needed to be fairly well targeted with what you were doing. Then along came digital and the distribution cost went down to zero. So the question was then, well, I'll just send it to everybody because some of them would buy. And in the early days, that was true. You know, you would send out a million emails and you would get 10 times as many responses as if you sent out a hundred thousand emails because, actually, people were quite pleased to get some of this newfangled digital communication. And then everybody jumps on that bandwagon, and now every one of us sees that we get dozens or hundreds of emails every single day and the overwhelming majority of those are garbage. So we just automatically do what you do, Tim, which is set up a rule or just bin them or mark them as spam or unsubscribe or whatever the process is we go through to try to limit that stuff that comes in.

Adam Gray [00:27:12]:

And the challenge that that has created, which I think that marketers haven't fully appreciated, is that one in a thousand emails is great and you want to see it and you miss it because you're too busy piling all of the the junk into the in in into the rubbish bin. And, unfortunately, now people have gone on to social to do that. So we see this kind of sending of InMails as if that's magically gonna be you know, if you've got a crappy message that you send by letter or you send in an advert or you send by email and nobody responds, why are they gonna respond if you send it via email? Well, clearly, they're not. But now AI wants this hyper personalized way of sending out messages to people. But if you haven't fundamentally understood what the interaction needs to look like, if you're still walking up to somebody in the street you've never met before, putting out your hand and saying, I'd like to help you with your investment strategy, they're gonna walk away because they have no idea who you are. Mhmm. So so using the tools such as AI to help you build human to human interactions, to have conversations with real people, to build rapport and trust and show interest in what it is that they're doing is the key. But it requires people to to give some thoughts to how they're applying these tools rather than just pile them in there.

Adam Gray [00:28:39]:

Oh, AI can do that for me. Well, it'll only do what you tell it to do.

Bertrand Godillot [00:28:44]:

Well, the the there's always the temptation of the the easy button. Right?

Tim Hughes [00:28:48]:

What what

Richard Jones [00:28:49]:

I am

Bertrand Godillot [00:28:49]:

supposed to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:28:50]:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I get I mean, I get emails from people, and and clearly, you can get templates of marketing profs. So just so everybody knows, if you go to marketing profs, you can get email templates, except I get five emails from five different companies, all competitors using the same, template.

Bertrand Godillot [00:29:08]:

So it's what would would would would say. I mean, it

Tim Hughes [00:29:10]:

it it just beggars belief why people fit in it somehow or other than their marketing.

Richard Jones [00:29:13]:

What what's what's the saying of fool with a tool is still a fool?

Tim Hughes [00:29:17]:

It's still a fool. Yeah.

Richard Jones [00:29:18]:

And and that kind of pretty much sums

Tim Hughes [00:29:20]:

it up. Saying fool is polite.

Richard Jones [00:29:22]:

Yeah. And

Tim Hughes [00:29:22]:

the thing is I was thinking of another word.

Richard Jones [00:29:27]:

It it it amplifies the the the foolishness. You know?

Tim Hughes [00:29:31]:

Oh, it does. I mean, these people are made idiots of themselves. I mean, I I don't understand. You know? Then they'll come back for you. Why haven't you responded to me? I mean, it's like, do you really think I need do you think I'm gonna spend waste my time?

Adam Gray [00:29:42]:

I'm just circling back on this thing, this email. Did you get a chance to remind me?

Tim Hughes [00:29:46]:

Know who you are. You've written me a rubbish message that means which is meaningless. I don't even Tim,

Adam Gray [00:29:51]:

just bouncing this back to the

Tim Hughes [00:29:52]:

top of your email. Some of these people write it. I don't I mean, I'm I'm pretty I'm I know my I know my IT, but some of these people write in a language that I don't even understand. I mean, in English. I mean, it's like, you know, with all the funny little three letter I mean, come on. So the basic simple English.

Bertrand Godillot [00:30:10]:

So, clearly, the basic is, you know, we we want to create relationship. And what we're saying is that potentially, well, AI has the potential of augmenting augmenting ourselves, and make it easier for us to or at least, you know, from a maybe more scalable

Richard Jones [00:30:30]:

for us.

Tim Hughes [00:30:30]:

So so so so Adam was saying something the other day, which which, which I thought was was was great, which is that going back to first principles, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. So as an individual, if I reach out to somebody cold to to basically in in whatever way, what's gonna happen to the person that's gonna that I'm reaching out to is gonna come back to me. They're gonna look at my LinkedIn profile, and then they're gonna make a decision about whether they should actually because because when you reach out to somebody, what you're doing is that you're you're, you're you're giving control to them to make to to to to say whether they're actually gonna talk to you or not. So the first thing that you need to do if you're gonna be active on social media is to have a good LinkedIn profile. And the thing about a good LinkedIn profile is it's not about me or what I think is a good LinkedIn profile saying I've just been to I've just been to president's club and and all of this. What what, what we're doing is is that we need to be thinking about what the buyer, is is thinking. So one of the things that we need is we need to have a to to, you know, to to pass go, to use an a monopoly, metaphor. To pass go, we need to have a a a good LinkedIn profile.

Tim Hughes [00:31:54]:

And okay. So we could use AI to do that. Adam's actually been doing some trialing to to his his summary title and and his summary, I think, is is written by Yeah. Though it's not just write me a some write me a, a LinkedIn summary. It's actually gone backwards and forwards with the conversation. Now it's it's it's a fundamental thing to to to to have on on on LinkedIn and to to to do any form of whether you're doing social selling or any selling. And what people have got to understand is that it's not about all of the things that they write. I'm highly energetic.

Tim Hughes [00:32:38]:

Highly energetic, results orientated stuff because it's meaningless. And and again, what we're doing is that we're talking about being human. So what we found in our research shows is the more human that you are when you talk on your your LinkedIn profile, which remember is your shop window to the world, the more human you are, the more people will lean into you. The more people are gonna look at you and go, do you know Richard looks really interesting? God, you know, he not only is he not only is, is he a fighter pilot, but he knows something about cyber security. And, and, and so, and, and, and, and so what happens is that we need to always remember that this isn't just about automating our stuff, but it's also about we, we need to still have those skills because this is also about being human. Because the more human you are, the more people are gonna wanna talk to you and the more people that and conversations you're gonna have.

Bertrand Godillot [00:33:34]:

Yeah. And this is where there might be a little bit of a paradox, but I'll

Tim Hughes [00:33:37]:

I'll Absolutely.

Bertrand Godillot [00:33:39]:

I'll let Adam, drive this.

Adam Gray [00:33:41]:

I I was gonna say that that I think that building a relationship on social is a fantastic parallel to the world of dating. It's been a long time since I've done any dating, but but, you know, the the point is that you have, you have some key points during the dating process. You know? So one of those is the first time you go out for a coffee or a drink or a meal with that person, the first time you're meeting them face to face. So the stuff that you do before that, you know, you arrange you're gonna meet them somewhere or you're you're about to try to arrange you're gonna meet them somewhere. So you check them out, first of all. You check they're not an axe murderer. You check they're not already married. You check all of this stuff.

Adam Gray [00:34:28]:

All of that's done in the background. But the point when you show up for the date, you have to show up and you're relying on them showing up. You know, if I went for a date and I sent Tim instead of me because he looks a bit like me, it's like it it's gonna be it's not gonna be a representation of what the person gets if they decide to go on a second date. But but but the the the reality is that this is often how people behave when they're using digital tools, isn't it? They think I'll automate the conversation bit. I'll automate this. I'll I'll send a blanket sort of message. And the point is that that's not how relationships work in any form.

Tim Hughes [00:35:11]:

So so I'm I'm actually gonna I'm I'm gonna answer one of the questions.

Bertrand Godillot [00:35:17]:

But Hopefully, that's the one.

Tim Hughes [00:35:18]:

So so so when I I I won't show the won't show the name. So my coauthor, when we wrote this nine years ago, my coauthor was going through a divorce. And, and, he said that I'm using all of the principles at the moment that were in our book to basically on dates. And I said, how's it working out? He says it's going really well. So, so so there is actually a really good analogy between, what we teach in social selling and and dating. So so Michelle

Adam Gray [00:35:54]:

Hi, Michelle.

Tim Hughes [00:35:56]:

Michelle, so so when when when you connect with somebody, what do you do? You check them out. And when we when we build relationships with people, what do we do? We try and find a a something that's common. So the more that we can we can find that we have in common, the more that we can trust somebody. So you're highly unlikely. If I put out a message and say, here's the best, glasses case in the world, you're unlikely to actually like or comment on that because what will happen is that when you like or comment on it, you are immediately, what I will do is send you a message saying, thanks for liking my post about the my glasses case. Would you like to buy one? So you don't actually, engage with it because you know what's gonna happen is you're gonna you're gonna get a pitch. If I basically post, out something out there like, here's me with the kids and they're playing football, and you say, I've got kids as well and and they're always playing football as well, I can then say, so why don't we jump on a call? Because we've got something in common. You go, yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:37:01]:

Okay. Because we're not we're not having a conversation about selling stuff. Now the the conversation may turn around and say, so what do you do? Well, I do this. And And then you're gonna turn around to me and say, so what do you do, Tim? And I've got an opportunity to pitch. But the fact that matter is is that you'll get more engagement and more conversations from personal posts on social media because it's social media, then you will do than if you're putting out stuff on there about products and services and brochures and brochureware. And we've got data that backs this up.

Bertrand Godillot [00:37:33]:

Clearly, we do. And I and I and I think that's, because that's always a question. You know? What is the balance? And that goes a little bit of our our topic. But what is the balance between the things that, you know, me with the cat and me with the dog and me in the forest and and me on on on Fridays with

Tim Hughes [00:37:57]:

Well, if you're if you're

Bertrand Godillot [00:37:58]:

on Fridays.

Tim Hughes [00:37:59]:

Yeah. I mean, I've got a I've got a colleague, and she's always she, a friend of mine who's always taking pictures. And, you know, here's me with the team in Italy, and here's me with the team in in in Singapore, and here's me. And it's like, do do you actually ever do any work? Because same as if you actually you know, here's me having coffee with, Bertrand, and here's me having coffee with Richard, and it's like, do do do you actually do anything? So you've gotta make sure that you're getting this this you're you're you're making sure that if you're putting stuff out, you know, people jump to conclusions. And if you're always putting posts out there that you're always on the beach, people just gonna assume that you spend all the time on the beach. But, you will find that the more personal stuff that you put out, the more people will will lean in and engage with you.

Bertrand Godillot [00:38:48]:

I think we all have that, the data that that backs this up in terms of, you know, the Well,

Tim Hughes [00:38:55]:

you have of,

Richard Jones [00:38:56]:

of your

Bertrand Godillot [00:38:56]:

That's because

Tim Hughes [00:38:57]:

you're gonna you you you took up you took all of so Bertrand took all of his posts, worked got all of the engagements, put it in a spreadsheet, put it into ChatGPT, and said which is the best posts, and they're all personal posts, the best ones.

Bertrand Godillot [00:39:11]:

Exactly. Pretty straightforward. And and there is obviously, an explanation to this. Why? Because this is personal. You're telling a story. I mean, all the things we already discussed. So, and by the way, when we talk about onboarding your, your AI teammate, that is quite a, I think, a a good idea to, to actually feed your, your conversation with stuff you've written and the performance of the stuff.

Tim Hughes [00:39:39]:

So so as this is turning into a q and a with, Michelle Hoskin, I'll answer the next question, which is, how does vulnerability play? Yeah. It plays a point. I would but I would agree with you, Michelle. I think people are creating vulnerability posts in Chat GPT and putting them out, because what they're doing is that they they found out that they, or or that there's someone somewhere, there will be a list of of headlines. You know? I've made this big mistake. All all of those sort of things, which seems

Bertrand Godillot [00:40:11]:

I resigned.

Tim Hughes [00:40:12]:

Yeah. I resigned. This is the mistake. You know? And they're all clickbait, headlines. And I think in most cases, you could see this is a particular format where they've been written, and they've all been done in chat GBT. But they're getting engagement from those people. I guess, quite often, what happens is the content goes in in, ebbs and flows. And what you'll find is that a whole load of people will put those out, and then gradually people will get bored and and and it will flow off.

Tim Hughes [00:40:40]:

And then those people will complain they've got I think one of

Adam Gray [00:40:42]:

the thing the other thing is, though, that it's being authentic is about being authentic. So, you know, I've had a really bad day today. Everything's gone wrong, and my wife's left me and the dog's died. Okay. It's okay to share that post. It's okay to share this is the worst post of this is the worst day of my life because all of these things have happened. Because we all go through times like that when things are not going well. And often our community I remember when I when I had cancer, I did a post about it, and you said, Tim, you need to print out all the comments you've got because there's an awful lot of love there.

Adam Gray [00:41:18]:

So every time you're feeling down, you can then refer back to that and you can read all of those comments. But and I think that this is the thing that a lot of people don't get is that they they do that, and they have a vulnerable post. They get a huge amount of engagement on the post, and then the next post is also a vulnerable post and the next one and the next one. And it moves them from being somebody that's a credible professional person that's having a bad day or has had an incident in their life through to being somebody whose life is a car crash. And the problem with that is that that's not somebody that you want to do business with because they're they're wrapped up in their own problems. And and we're all wrapped up in our problems, whatever those problems may be, but, actually, leading with that is not is not what people actually want. And, you know, ultimately, less for you, Bertrand, but for the rest of us, we're English, British. You know? So, yeah, how are you today? I'm fine.

Adam Gray [00:42:17]:

Thank you. How are you? Is the correct answer.

Bertrand Godillot [00:42:20]:

Well, in French, we say not too bad.

Adam Gray [00:42:24]:

Not too bad, all things

Tim Hughes [00:42:26]:

cost. So so so I I I my my, post today was about, a post that I saw on LinkedIn last week, which is where somebody had, a sales lead who had basically put out something saying that what they were, they were they were recruiting. And, and he reckoned he had the top team, and, and so he put out a photo of the team. And, they were all holding arms like this, and they were all white, and they were all male. And because they were holding arms like this, it came across in in America, they call it bro culture. So I actually had females coming to me saying, I would never work at that place. I would never work at that. I would never work at that company, and I would never work for that individual.

Tim Hughes [00:43:19]:

And and and and clearly, you know, he he he didn't realize and this is just one of these things where we go a lot of these questions. It's like, why is nobody teaching people how to use social media? You know, we're taught how to use when you go and join a company, you're taught how to use, health and safety, how to put a ladder up. You're taught how to, make sure that you say the right things in terms of working with, people from different backgrounds and stuff. But you'll never taught how to actually use social. Here's an individual from a a well named well known household brand, basically putting out racist, post, not knowingly, racist, but putting out a post saying, come and work for my company. We're all a bunch of white old, blokes. And and it and it and and so so one of those things you need to be really, really careful about because we're talking about the different posts and and personal posts. You need to be really careful about what you're you're putting out because AI won't be the won't ultimately give you a, they'll give you the answer that you want.

Tim Hughes [00:44:29]:

So if you're going in and and asking for ultimately, which is a a white male response, you're gonna get a white, white male answer.

Richard Jones [00:44:38]:

I guess the thing there is, Tim, he's he's at least being authentic if it's working against him.

Tim Hughes [00:44:44]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, exactly. And that's the kind of thing.

Richard Jones [00:44:47]:

In a way, that that that proves the point that, you know, it is the authenticity that does it for you. Whether it works in your favor or against you is another matter. But I think that's where, you know, social is really valuable. It it kinda sort of separates the wheat from the chat, really, doesn't it?

Tim Hughes [00:45:07]:

Bertrand.

Bertrand Godillot [00:45:08]:

Yeah. No. I was just thinking about, you know, what what what but by design, AI will give you an average. I mean, if you don't do if you don't train it or if you don't you don't fine tune it, it will give you an app an average answer. And if the goal of the post is to generate reactions and get and not not even talking about engagement. I'm just talking reactions. So you you you your ultimate goal is to go viral.

Tim Hughes [00:45:44]:

Then

Bertrand Godillot [00:45:47]:

then I think we're missing the point, with respect to, social selling because what what we're actually looking for is creating relationships. So we're looking for engaging content, not not not necessarily viral.

Tim Hughes [00:46:03]:

We we not look for we're not looking for virality.

Bertrand Godillot [00:46:05]:

And and actually not at all.

Tim Hughes [00:46:07]:

No. Because So so that's I I mean, people say to me, so what what should you be measuring in social? And the answer is two things. One is the number of meetings you have, and two is the number of amount of revenue that you close. It's no different from from, you know, you know, the number of meetings you have, the number of proposals you put out, the number of of of revenue you close. It's no different from any other time. Now likes and comments are important because the engagement is a is a opportunity for you to have conversations. You know? You need to know how to harvest that engagement so you can have conversations. But at the end of the day, it's the the the sales hasn't changed.

Bertrand Godillot [00:46:50]:

For sure, it didn't. There was there was

Tim Hughes [00:46:52]:

a question I was gonna ask Adam for a moment, and he's gone out of my head. I can't remember what it was.

Bertrand Godillot [00:46:56]:

But I'm sure he's got the question.

Tim Hughes [00:46:57]:

There was a there was a number that goes I know that he always gets something. I was gonna ask him some soapbox.

Richard Jones [00:47:02]:

Yeah. But but we've we've just had

Adam Gray [00:47:03]:

a comment in from from Matthew.

Tim Hughes [00:47:06]:

Right.

Adam Gray [00:47:06]:

What about growth hacking

Bertrand Godillot [00:47:07]:

There's lots of reaction in that.

Adam Gray [00:47:09]:

And selling with an AI teammate. I must just say for the record, the term growth hacking is one of the things that I hate more in business than anything else in terms of a phrase for something. And and kind of growth hacking, the idea that you're taking a shortcut between where you are now and where you want to be is like organizations that claim they're gonna be a viral a you know, we're a viral marketing agency. We create posts that go viral. No no agency can claim to be a viral agency. None at all. Because whether something goes viral is not within their their their remit. They can't control that because that's about whether or not other people engage with the content.

Adam Gray [00:47:53]:

So you can create good content, but you can't you can't claim it to go viral. And like growth hacking, yeah, at the end of the day, if you've got the right product at the right price at the right time in front of the right people, you're likely to be able to grow faster than if you haven't got all of those pieces in place. But the the way that you get to growth hack is by having lots of conversations with the people that you want to be talking to. And, AI is should be the route to enable you to be able to have more of those human to human interactions and conversations with the people that you you want to. And this idea and we had another comment from someone earlier about advertising. You know, the problem with advertising is that you're pushing your content in front of somebody. They haven't asked for it. If they haven't asked for it, they're not going to engage with it.

Adam Gray [00:48:44]:

So sending a brochure, advertising to people, outbound cold calling, outbound emailing. The problem with all of this stuff is that if I haven't opened the door to you, there's no you have no control over what happens next. I can ignore you or not, and the chances are that I'm not gonna engage with your content because I don't want your content.

Tim Hughes [00:49:10]:

Airbnb is a business to consumer organization.

Bertrand Godillot [00:49:13]:

I know. Yeah. For for for the region. Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:49:15]:

Well deal in a business consumer. It's not a I deal in business to business.

Adam Gray [00:49:19]:

And and they they've got a very simple offer, haven't they? You know, it's it's a room or a flat somewhere that you want to go and visit. And, I think, Bertrand, your, your summary of what social selling where social selling works for people is if they have something that they can't describe in under a minute, then they need to have a conversation. It can't be sold from an advert. You know? And, yeah, we've all bought rucksacks and belts and training shoes from Instagram because you flick through and you go, oh, that's okay. It's a hundred bucks. I'll get that. But actually for strategic large value, large value purchases, it doesn't work that way.

Tim Hughes [00:50:03]:

And we've got And I and I think that quite often people quite often mistake, an up market for a down market. So quite often, what you'll find is there's a lot of people when when we're in a, an up market going like this, and they're saying, we're selling loads of stuff. Well, yes, because loads of people are buying. Yeah. But we're we're, you know, we're currently in a down market. And therefore, quite often, what you'll find is that people are trying to use up market techniques in a down market, and it just doesn't work.

Adam Gray [00:50:29]:

Yeah. Invernance by the fact that so many people are being laid off at the moment.

Tim Hughes [00:50:33]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so Robert Robert Tell has basically asked a question.

Tim Hughes [00:50:40]:

What drives the best direct message messages to meetings? And both by by the way, Robert, thank you so much for tuning in because he he tunes in an awful lot and leaves lots of comments, and thank you for that, and I and I wanna say that. So so the first and foremost first the first thing you gotta remember with with social is this the person that you're gonna send a message to is they're gonna check you out. So the first thing you is that you need to have a profile that that person is gonna go, that person looks interesting. So so your your profile is your shop window to the world, and a billion 1,100,000,000 people walk past it every single day. The second thing about sending messages to people is that this is human. You can get Chat GPT to write it for you, but I bet they won't do it properly, which is you gotta remember that the person who you're you're connecting to is it's a human, and and you need to show that you're interested in them, Not that you're gonna try and sell them something. Because as soon as you say that you're gonna try and sell something, people just run away. So any any connect, any, you know, a lot of people there's a big debate out there.

Tim Hughes [00:51:45]:

There's a well, there's a the number one debate out there at the moment is should you send a message? And everybody says you shouldn't put message in. And the reason for that is what they're gonna do is connect and immediately pitch. Because if you put a message in, people go, I know why you're gonna and won't accept. So so the number one thing that you should do is do where if everyone zigs, you need to zap. The first thing that you need to do is you need to put a message in. And that message is if I'm gonna connect with Richard, that message needs to be Richard centric. Hey, Richard. I read your post about, the fact that, you're doing some work with a, aircraft company.

Tim Hughes [00:52:21]:

That sounds really interesting. Can we I'm I'm currently, got my father to drive a Spitfire. Can we connect? Richard, first and foremost, if you flatter him and show that there's that that that level of connection, everybody will connect. And and, using our benchmark, our clients are getting usually between 6080% acceptance rate on on connection request. So that gives anybody who's watching that a benchmark in terms of what you should be getting. It's possible to get that sort of level. So that answers your question, Robert. And thank you for tuning in.

Bertrand Godillot [00:52:59]:

And we have, we have one last question maybe. I think this one is interesting because we we already discussed that a while ago, I think, almost a year ago, on Digital avatars. On digital avatars. So, you know, our thoughts on digital avatars,

Tim Hughes [00:53:17]:

we What is our what is our thoughts on digital avatars, Mitchel?

Bertrand Godillot [00:53:20]:

Do do we do we have some thoughts on that? Or I I I trust we do.

Tim Hughes [00:53:27]:

Do we have any thoughts on digital avatars, Adam?

Adam Gray [00:53:30]:

We do. We certainly do.

Bertrand Godillot [00:53:32]:

Okay. I mean, what I think no.

Adam Gray [00:53:35]:

The the the thing with digital avatars, like anything else in this space, is there is a potential for good. I don't mean for, like, the greater good of mankind, but I mean there's a potential for them to provide value for people. There is also the potential for abuse. And the key thing is, and and I think the key thing that everybody should always be asking is the first question before they deploy a tool, whether that's AI or automation or whatever is, would this be better, like a better experience for the person that I'm having the engagement with or better outcomes for me? Would it be better if I did this or I got the tool to do this? So the research, yeah, absolutely better for AI to do it because it can cover much more ground more quickly and more accurately than I can. For having a conversation, probably not.

Bertrand Godillot [00:54:30]:

And and that's, you know, it's it's exactly the same, but, say, I think it's the mindset. The mindset is about augmentation. So, you know, is this something that is actually helping you scaling with without compromising the relationship driven type type of approach that we have? And, you know, that is true for for working with your AI teammate, and that is true for working with with another with an avatar, which is another mode of of AI. At least, that's where I stand today.

Tim Hughes [00:55:13]:

That's right.

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:13]:

I've been quite impressed, by the way, by

Tim Hughes [00:55:15]:

the way of the cars. Yes. Thank you.

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:18]:

We have to close this, and, that that is painful. But but we but we will be back. We will be back. And, and I'd like to, to thank, our panelist today for, for a great session and and the audience whose participation is absolutely outstanding. So thank you so much. We now have a newsletter, by the way. So don't miss an episode. Get the show insights get the show highlights and the behind beyond the show insights and reminders of upcoming episodes.

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:52]:

You can just scan the QR code on screen, or visit us at digitaldownload.live/newsletter. Thank you so much, guys. Have a great weekend on a sunny, and and a sunny weekend, apparently.

Tim Hughes [00:56:05]:

And, before we close out, Bertrand, if people would like to come on the show, what they need to do is they should send you a message, shouldn't they?

Bertrand Godillot [00:56:14]:

A direct message on LinkedIn. Yes. Best way to, to move forward. Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. Everyone.

Tim Hughes [00:56:21]:

Bye, everybody. Guys. Thanks. Thank you.

Richard Jones [00:56:23]:

Bye bye.

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