This week on The Digital Download, we welcome back social selling experts Tim Hughes and Adam Gray, the Co-founders of DLA Ignite.

Tim and Adam have been instrumental in helping businesses adapt to the changing landscape of sales, focusing on building meaningful connections and driving revenue through social selling.

We'll be exploring critical questions such as:

* What are the fundamental principles of social selling that remain essential in today's digital world?

* How can sales professionals effectively build trust and rapport with potential customers through social media?

* What are the most common mistakes businesses make when implementing social selling strategies, and how can they be avoided?

* How do you measure the ROI of social selling activities and demonstrate their impact on business outcomes?

* What are the key skills and mindsets that sales professionals need to succeed in social selling?

With their deep expertise and practical insights, Tim and Adam will provide actionable strategies to help sales professionals and organizations leverage social selling to drive growth and build lasting customer relationships.

Join us for a dynamic discussion that will provide you with the tools and knowledge to excel at 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

• Tracy Borreson, Founder and CEO of TLB Coaching & Events, a proud partner of DLA Ignite

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-05-16

Adam Gray [00:00:03]:

Hi, everybody, and welcome to another exciting episode of of The Digital Download, the longest running weekly business talk show on LinkedIn Live. We've been going for four years now, haven't we? Is it four years?

Tim Hughes [00:00:14]:

Four years. Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:00:15]:

Yeah. Remarkable. Absolutely remarkable.

Tim Hughes [00:00:18]:

Over four years. Fourth of May twenty twenty twenty twenty one.

Adam Gray [00:00:23]:

Amazing. And it seems like only yesterday. Unfortunately, Bertrand is on the golf course today, so he won't be won't be joining us, which means that you don't get the joys of of having an introduction in French or Italian or Spanish or Flemish or or Norwegian or whatever other languages Bertrand is fluent in. But, it's the the rest of us are as normal. So, let's quickly go around the around the room and introduce ourselves. Tim.

Tim Hughes [00:00:50]:

Thank you. Welcome, everybody, and, my name is Tim Hughes. I'm, the CEO and cofounder of DLA Ignite, and I'm famous for writing the book, social selling techniques to influence buyers and change makers.

Adam Gray [00:01:02]:

Tracy.

Tracy Borreson [00:01:04]:

Good morning, everybody. Tracy Borisen, founder of TLB Coaching and Events, proud partner of DLA Ignite. And, I'm I love the conversations about social selling because from a marketer's point of view, I think there's many things that we can learn as marketers.

Tim Hughes [00:01:21]:

So so my first question is I'm gonna ask, Adam something to do with the marketer's position. Awesome. Had a conversation with marketers this week. So

Tracy Borreson [00:01:32]:

hold on. All of the opinions on

Adam Gray [00:01:34]:

it. Good. Richard,

Richard Jones [00:01:37]:

Good afternoon, every good afternoon, everybody. Losing my voice here. Yeah. Richard Jones, Curate, another proud partner of DLA Ignite. I'm still a relative newbie to social selling. I did realize when I first engaged with the guys that I was definitely, unconsciously incompetent. I had no idea. I didn't know what I was doing, but I'm now very much in the consciously incompetent stage.

Richard Jones [00:02:02]:

So definitely moving in the right direction. A huge

Adam Gray [00:02:06]:

step forward. And and I'm Adam Gray. I'm Tim's business partner and cofounder at the eleven night. And, often on these shows, we have, we have guests. We haven't got a guest this week. So we are going to talk about, social selling. It's what we do as a business as you probably all know. This isn't a sales pitch, but we are gonna share some of our experiences and our knowledge around this, because it's something that we feel very passionate about.

Adam Gray [00:02:32]:

In a world where, everybody's shouting and trying to get more and more share of voice of more and more impacts of their their outbound activities, whether that's by telephone or by advertising or by email or by whatever, method they use. There's something to be said for for trying to facilitate human interactions. You know, we all know the power of networking and of going to meetings and meeting people and and, you know, touching flesh with those people and and getting to know them. But but particularly nowadays, there's a fundamental problem with that, which is the the huge cost of doing that. A, you've got to set up the event and and somebody has to pay for that, and b, I've got to visit the event, which is a day out of my life to come to that event when I could be doing something else. And there's a huge element of chance there because if I'm not in the room and you're not in the room at the same time and free to talk to one another, we're not gonna meet even though that may be a a fantastic business, opportunity for both of us. So so social selling helps to bridge that gap. So I've I've got loads of loads of questions.

Adam Gray [00:03:47]:

But you had one. You said Tim.

Tim Hughes [00:03:50]:

Yes. So so, I think the first question is, what do we define as social selling? Because I think that, a lot of people think that peep when people send you a spam message over social, connect, and then pitch, they think that's social selling.

Adam Gray [00:04:07]:

Which we know it isn't.

Tim Hughes [00:04:08]:

And we know it's sending a spam message.

Adam Gray [00:04:10]:

Yeah. So so how how do you define social selling, Tim?

Tim Hughes [00:04:16]:

So so I define it as using your presence and behavior on social media to build influence, make connections, grow relationship, and trust, which lead to conversational conversation and commercial interaction.

Adam Gray [00:04:31]:

So why is that different? And we're all on the same page here, but but but for the benefit of people watching, why is that different from me sending you a connection request or an InMail saying, I'm the best insert. You know? I'm the best CRM system in the world. You should buy from me. Why is why is what you described different to that?

Tim Hughes [00:04:55]:

I think that the the mistake that people make and and it's very easy to make the mistake because everybody is doing the same thing. When you're in when when everybody's in the room shouting, it's very easy to to suddenly start shouting. The and and the mistake that people make is that they treat LinkedIn as a sales network where you come to to LinkedIn and basically tell everybody how great you are. So everybody basically is standing there shouting saying buy my product because we're great. And just the same as you I always say to people. So if if I walked up to you in the high street, you didn't know me, and I just said, would you buy a pension off me? Would you do that? And they'd say, no. Of course. I wouldn't.

Tim Hughes [00:05:31]:

It's like, well, why wouldn't you? Well, I don't know you. Okay. So there needs to be a relationship with it. Well yeah. And I need to trust you. So so it's the same on social media. You know, one of the things that we we we teach is the fact that societal norms, manners, the way that you talk to people, the way that you thank people are the same on, the same in the analog world, just the same as in the digital world. And, and and so what what what the the difference is that if you go to to somebody and you show an interest in well, first and foremost, it well, you go to someone and you show an interest in them, what they're gonna do is they're gonna look at you.

Tim Hughes [00:06:13]:

And and when they look at you, they're gonna they're gonna jump to a conclusion about whether that they they think they like you or trust you because there's that fundamental you know? If if I come up to you if I come up to you on the high street to say, do you wanna buy a pension and I smell, you you you are gonna make you're gonna say, no. Not today. I'm rather busy. And and and so, you know, if and if I come up to you on LinkedIn and I smell of, commission and I wanna sell you something, what are you gonna do? You're just gonna say, no. I'm not busy. I'm I'm not interested. And so there's a there's a fundamental, difference there. Otherwise, I'm Tracy.

Tracy Borreson [00:06:54]:

I mean, this is the thing that I think too is really interesting from a marketing point of view and how most marketers are using social media, which is just posting content like it's a billboard. Right? And so okay. Yep. I'm in my car, and I drive by certain billboards when I'm going between my house and Downtown Calgary. But on the Internet, now this is like driving through a slammed forest of billboards that are coming at you so fast you can't, like, read them anymore. And so, yeah, you can put a billboard out there, but at the end of the day, if you're selling something that requires trust in order to buy, which is anything that has any kind of decent price point attached to it, then trust is required. And I've always been very confused by the fact that as humans, we go out into the world and we feel, we experience how we build trust with other people. What does that look like? It generally looks like more than one interaction.

Tracy Borreson [00:08:05]:

It looks like a meaningful interaction. What is a meaningful interaction? You wave in my brochure on your face. Is that a meaningful interaction? We could count it as a meaningful interaction from a CRM point of view, but as humans, we know that that's not. And so if we just took a step back into our own experience and said, what feels good for me in terms of connection experiences, that's how I like to look at them, whether that's analog or whether that's digital, then I think we would have a lot more insights that we could tap into. We just get so overwhelmed by do this, do this, do this, do this. You have to post on social media every day. You have to be on all of the channels. You have to have a website.

Tracy Borreson [00:08:52]:

You have to have a podcast. You have to be the longest running weekly business talk show on LinkedIn live. Right? Sorry. You can't. We would. But, like, there's so much stuff, and then people get distracted by so much stuff. They forget, like, you know how to build trust with people. Why don't you just do that?

Adam Gray [00:09:12]:

So so that that's a really interesting point, and that that's a really good point around marketing and sales and relationships. You know what works. You know what you want to have done to you. So why do people find it so difficult to put themselves in the shoes of the recipient and behave in a way that they themselves would find attractive and engaging?

Tracy Borreson [00:09:36]:

I mean, personally, and I this has come up for me a bunch of times this week. I think it's based on personal confidence. The ability to say, I know how to build a relationship. I know how to communicate my product knowledge. I know how to nurture. I know how to solve problems. I know how to create connection. I know how to attract eyes because we also have a bunch of people out there, solutions, quote, unquote solutions providers, who are trying to convince you that they know better than you how to do that.

Tracy Borreson [00:10:17]:

And, like, one of the things I love about the DLA Ignite social selling methodology is this isn't about, like, two guys being like, we know what you should do, and here's all the things you should say, and here's the template for all your messages. It's a system that allows you to be yourself within the system. And so it's about tapping into how would you build relationships? What would you say? How fast does it take for your industry to build? How many times are we throwing up roadblocks in our own experience because we think we have to post on social media every day and and break down the difference between, like, what does it look like to post on social media every day in a meaningful way for you and the people who are consuming your content versus just doing it because someone told you to do it?

Adam Gray [00:11:14]:

But I I I think it's it's it's not it's not about social media, though. I think it's about people's interaction with other people. So Tim and I, we were in a meeting with the sales director many years ago. And whilst we were in the meeting, the phone rang. So this guy picks up the phone, and he goes, I don't recognize the number. So he sends it to voice mail. I won't bother taking that. And then then he a cold call for those that don't

Tim Hughes [00:11:42]:

understand the subject.

Adam Gray [00:11:44]:

And then, he proceeded to tell us why cold calling was the answer and not social selling. And we said, but do you not get the irony here that somebody just cold called you and you basically hung up on them and you're telling your reps to cold call? That that there must be a better way to get the conversation going. And and I think that a a lot of the a lot of the challenge here is that people either they're unable to connect the dots. So I don't like that done to me, but it's kind of okay when I do it to someone else. And that's either because they can't empathize with the recipient of this stuff or they and I think that this is the big one. Or they think that somehow the rules don't apply to them. So so you're not in you're too busy to listen to my sales pitch or I'm too busy to listen to your sales pitch. I've got so many things that I have to do every day, but, actually, you're gonna want to listen to my sales pitch because my product's really exciting.

Adam Gray [00:12:40]:

And, you know, the reality is that a brochure is a brochure, you know, whether that's a physical brochure or an electronic brochure or a sales pitch or an advert or whatever. A brochure is a brochure is a brochure. And some brochures are good and some brochures are bad, but all of them use the same mechanism, which is I'm going to try to catch your eye. And the problem is that I can't legislate for what you're gonna find attractive. So, you know, I I've decided to wear a gray polo shirt today, and you might say, oh, that's a lovely color, or you might say it's a horrible color. Actually, I can't know that until, you know, there's some kind of outcome.

Tim Hughes [00:13:22]:

So so I got approached, recently, and someone said that, he said, I'm following the Gary v, so the Gary Vaynerchuk, social selling method, which is to put four videos out per day

Tracy Borreson [00:13:39]:

on LinkedIn. Content.

Tim Hughes [00:13:41]:

On LinkedIn. And and I looked at his profile, and he's getting nothing no engagement at all on his on because he hasn't done a number of fundamental things before he's putting out the content. And and I just went back to him and said, would you get tired of it, putting out four videos, and you want to have an alternative, method that works? Give us a call.

Adam Gray [00:14:04]:

Yeah. So Yayan says, is the problem not the word selling? We have an expectation of how this feels and how it's conducted. In reality, nobody likes to be sold to. Yeah. Ab absolutely. You know?

Tracy Borreson [00:14:20]:

But I would also say, like, if we define selling by the all of the sales experiences we've ever had in our whole life, Right? There are times when you have bought something where it didn't feel like you were being sold to.

Adam Gray [00:14:39]:

Yep. Absolutely. Right?

Tracy Borreson [00:14:40]:

And so I think when we think about this that doesn't mean the person in the store or online or service provider isn't doing the activity of selling. So I think it's an interesting exploration of our own individual relationship with the word selling, because we could call it social connecting. And but there's also a lot of social connecting that happens that doesn't end in a commercial business relationship. And when you're looking at building a business, at some point, something has to end in a commercial relationship. Otherwise, you're gonna go out of business. And so I think I think yeah. And it's just the opportunity and anybody else watching. Because I I have this conversation with my entrepreneur friends all the time.

Tracy Borreson [00:15:29]:

Well, I just don't like to sell, except you really like to help. So why don't you just, like, go and help people? But at some point, you want people to pay you for helping them. Right? So that is also selling

Adam Gray [00:15:45]:

semantics. Well, yes and yes and no. I mean, I I I think the nicest thing is where you have an interaction with somebody and then they ask to buy. So you don't actually have to sell. You have to obviously navigate the sale process. But but I think so often, you know, we we've we've been brought up on a diet of the boiler room and Glengarry Glenbrass and and the Wolf of Wall Street, and selling is about making you spend money on something that you don't want to spend money on. In those instances, it's it's an unpleasant thing to be the recipient of, and we all have it when we get a phone call from a mobile phone provider or a different mobile phone provider telling us that that they're aware that our contracts come up for renewal and they'd like to help us help us, and here here's all of the things that I'm gonna offer you. And trying to get those people off the phone is sometimes really difficult and quite a stress inducing process.

Adam Gray [00:16:40]:

And I think that, that often the word sales I think Yohan's right. Often the word sales has those kind of connotations. You know, it's an unpleasant experience. But but actually, the, you know, it's a Yohan says again, you know, nobody likes to be sold to. Actually, I think you're right, Tracy. If it's done really well, it can be a lovely experience being sold to because you don't feel that you're you you think you're being helped into a place where the purchase makes perfect sense.

Tim Hughes [00:17:10]:

Right.

Adam Gray [00:17:11]:

And you feel that the person has your back. Tim, sorry.

Tim Hughes [00:17:14]:

Yes. So I was gonna segue. So so first of all, we're we're all gonna wave to Andrew. Richard, you you don't know this, but we we waved waved to Andrew.

Adam Gray [00:17:24]:

And he waved

Tim Hughes [00:17:24]:

And he

Richard Jones [00:17:24]:

waved and

Tim Hughes [00:17:25]:

he waved back.

Richard Jones [00:17:25]:

No idea who you are.

Tim Hughes [00:17:30]:

So you had a a call with some marketers this week, didn't you? So why didn't you why didn't you talk about that call that you had in terms of how you explained how social selling helped them?

Adam Gray [00:17:44]:

Yeah. So, did this is a this is a tech company that they're gonna be doing some work with, and they have, they have a a strong sales function, and they also have a strong marketing function. And And the marketing function, and I'm not speaking out of term when I say this, is facing the same problems that every marketing function faces. You know, that that they have their their, processes and they have their their cadences that people that that interact with their content are put onto this conveyor belt. And, they said, and I'm I'm quoting pretty much when I when I when I say this, that they had a what happens is that they start to pursue people that have engaged with their content. They've visited a webinar or downloaded a white paper or downloaded a brochure or whatever. And, it goes into I think they said Gong is their tool that they choose. And, you know, so they send an email on the Monday, and then they send an email on the Thursday, and then they send an email on the Friday, and then they try a telephone call on the Monday.

Adam Gray [00:18:55]:

And, that persists until the target unsubscribes from their email. And and that's that was the feedback that they gave. Not not that it was all broken and it wasn't working, but that this is a challenge that that they're facing. But, I think that a lot of people in the the marketing world are concerned about social selling because when we talk about personal brand for individuals and we talk about individuals marketing themselves, it kind of steals some of marketing's thunder. And I think what's what's really interesting is that marketing in in in our view of the world, our view of the future of sales and outbound and stuff, marketing has a crucial role to play. You know, marketers, creating content, analyzing what works and what doesn't work, refining messaging so that it's elegant and effective, that is a marketer's bread and butter. That's not a salesperson's bread and butter. So marketing need to help sales, the individuals within the sales department, achieve those objectives.

Adam Gray [00:20:08]:

Now if you've got a company which has got, let's say, a thousand people in, and every day, those people post something on LinkedIn, let's say, and every day, they get 200 impressions of that piece of content that they've posted. That's a thousand impressions per person per week. That's 50,000 impressions per person per year. And there's a thousand people. That's 5,000,000 impressions. Now any marketer would like to get that degree of visibility of their content that's going out, particularly if it's content that's going out through a non branded channel. So this is a fantastic piece of advice that's come from Richard, a guy that I know and like and trust, as opposed to that's come from, to pick a company at random, IBM, which is a company that, well, clearly, they're gonna be trying to sell me something because they're a company. And and and that was a message that I think for for this marketing team, they heard that.

Adam Gray [00:21:08]:

They just went, yeah. That makes that makes perfect sense. You know, there's a yin and yang that we need to provide some value to salespeople, which is giving them our expertise and helping our sweet spot. This is what we're really good at. This is what we know. This is our bread and butter. And the work that they do is going to we'll pick up this point We will definitely in just a moment.

Tracy Borreson [00:21:34]:

Yeah. That sounds very The Matrix, by the way. Agents are coming.

Adam Gray [00:21:38]:

Doesn't it? But but there's something in it for the marketer as well. You know, marketers have, for years, been been going to to the the senior leadership team saying, this campaign was a success because we got a 50,000 views, and we got seven and a half thousand pieces of interaction on this, and we got x number of click throughs to the website or whatever. So all of those stats are things that are are worth it. And and I remember Tim and I were on a seminar some time ago. And and from our perspective, the thing that is most important is interaction. And the reason that interaction is most important is because if somebody clicks a like or comments or shares your post, you know exactly who that person is, and then you have a reason to have a conversation with them. Whereas impressions, are nice to show you that that, you know, the number of people viewing has gone up or they're roughly in the right place, but there's nothing I can actively do with that information. It's just a nice to have.

Adam Gray [00:22:38]:

And this person said, yeah. The reality is though that impressions, the visibility is the bit you pay for. If you go to Google, that's the bit you pay for. You know, you pay to have your stuff seen. So that is also a really valuable thing, not perhaps in terms of here's how that feeds into the the sales funnel, but absolutely in terms of here's a hundred thousand views that I don't have to pay for that I previously did have to pay for. So actually, there there is value in both of these things. And so marketing and sales need to to very much kind of work together. Because what we know is that if you take a piece of company content, no matter how well written it is, no matter how targeted it is, and you share it onto your timeline, nobody cares.

Adam Gray [00:23:24]:

If you take a picture of you smiling holding your new dog that you've just got, everybody cares, whether they like dogs or not. And the point is that that that's where the win comes. The win comes because the person that would never engage with a piece of your content, which is business related, for fear of the fact that you'll pounce on them and try to sell them something, We've got a new product. Oh, I'll drop a like on that. Bring, bring, bring, bring. You like the post about the new product? Can I come and demo it to you? They don't want that. When you've got a dog, they go like, because I've got dog as well. And then you say, have you got a dog? And they say, yes.

Adam Gray [00:24:02]:

And now you're having a conversation. You've got exactly the same outcome that you wanted, and it's just a case of moving that that conversation from dogs to you to what do you do to here's what I take.

Richard Jones [00:24:18]:

On on that point, Adam, I always think that dogs are tremendous conversation starter. It's amazing actually how just walking your dog, you will engage in conversations.

Tim Hughes [00:24:27]:

It's it's supposed to be a a way that you can pick up, your Your future. Your sweet spot.

Richard Jones [00:24:35]:

Hardness. Yeah. Yes. Well, that is I I don't wanna put a down on it, but I have my dog put down this week. So I've

Adam Gray [00:24:42]:

actually Oh, I'm so wrong.

Richard Jones [00:24:44]:

I've got nobody to go and talk to now when I go out for a walk. Because if I walk on my own, people will think

Tim Hughes [00:24:50]:

I'm odd.

Tracy Borreson [00:24:50]:

So, that sounds like a Richard, I walk on my own, and I'm pretty sure people think I'm odd. But

Richard Jones [00:24:56]:

But yeah. But I think that's I mean, I I I've thought about it quite a lot, the whole sort of concept of, you know, generating or creating conversations because, you know, any form of b t b to b sale of any significance is always gonna involve some form of conversation. You don't just sort of transact. You very much engage and build a relationship. And I think that's what we come sort of often miss miss the point on, you know, that, what what you post on LinkedIn in really is about provoking that conversation. It's not just a sort of, making noise and effectively, I guess, sort of pumping out what is corporate advertising. You know, you want to have the conversations and the conversations come from the the unusual and the offbeat and the interesting, not from the sort of generic stuff that, you know, everybody else is pushing out because that just

Adam Gray [00:25:47]:

On that point so,

Tim Hughes [00:25:51]:

Yeah. Here we go. I've I've just been on way, Richard.

Adam Gray [00:25:54]:

Just just been on

Tracy Borreson [00:25:55]:

to LinkedIn.

Adam Gray [00:25:56]:

And, this is, Mike Svetlick has left this comment. So, thank you, Mike. Maybe maybe agents are coming. This is a we we are currently, I believe, standing, staring into the abyss from this perspective. And the reason I say that is so deploying agents to do this is, is a very risky business. If you deploy agents on LinkedIn to do this, you very likely can get yourself banned. That's really bad. I've got 15,000 connections on LinkedIn.

Adam Gray [00:26:36]:

If I'm banned, not kind of just paused or switched off for a week, but if they ban me, I'm back to zero again. I have to start creating all of the content, creating all of the credibility, getting all of the recommendations, growing the network, all of that stuff again, which will take me months or years, or I might just go, dah. I'm gonna retire now because there's simply no point. I've got fifteen, twenty years worth of equity in that profile that's now gone. So that's the first thing at an individual level and why agents are not a very good idea. The other thing is that social networks work on the basis of reciprocity. You know, I go to a social network and I post content in order that I can sell you something. You are there possibly because you're gonna try to sell me something.

Adam Gray [00:27:27]:

And that's how every that's every interaction between any two people on social networks for the most part. The only reason I'm there is because there's an opportunity to sell. The only reason you're there is because there's an opportunity to to sell. And the problem is is we start to replace people with bots. We get to the situation where there's no point in me going to social networks anymore because there are no people there. There are simply bots that are trying to sell to me. So I'm not gonna go there as a customer because I'm not gonna be able to go there as a seller because there are no people left. And I think that that we'll see a similar thing unfold to what we've seen with email.

Adam Gray [00:28:08]:

You know, before the days of email, there was a limit to how many mails you could send to people. There was a print cost. There was a a a fulfillment cost. There was a mailing cost. There was all all of these associated costs, which meant that you needed to choose your targets very carefully. You know, it was gonna cost you a pound or a dollar per letter to make to to get that into people's onto people's doormats, which meant that if I'm looking for bold men, I'm clearly not gonna send this this letter to Richard or to Tracy because, you know, because they're they're not within the sweet spot of the market. When, when email marketing arrived so we've got design cost, which we had before. We've got no fulfillment cost, no print cost, no distribution cost with email.

Adam Gray [00:28:57]:

So, therefore, people would rather than saying, where's the win? Well, the win is that now when Tim says, I've shown up at the digital download, and I say, oh, he's wearing a a sort of salmon colored polo shirt. I can send an email that says, attention people in sal salmon colored polo shirts, and Tim will see it and he'll go, that's me. I better read that. Rather than that, though, I just use it as a platform to send the same email to everybody. And people talk about hyper personalization, but the ship has sailed because people don't read emails anymore. I get a hundred emails a day. And the the problem with that is, a, anybody that I don't know is consigned to to trash straight away because I don't want to get to know them because I haven't got time. And, b, some of the people that get consigned to trash are emails that I should be reading from people that I know, but they're buried under a mountain of stuff that I don't want.

Adam Gray [00:29:53]:

So email has become a broken method for delivering stuff now. And the beauty about, being in an agent free environment is that I get to engage with an individual human being and see whether or not that is a person that there's some chemistry with, and there's an opportunity for us to work together.

Tim Hughes [00:30:15]:

There's, couple of things. I think that from a, an AI perspective, we know and it's it's happened six months, maybe a year ago that people are dropping from a search to using AI to basically ask for the answers. And there's there's lots of research out there that shows that the only people that are denying it are the SEO experts. And, so so we know that people are using AI. We know that it is impact impactful. If you look at some of the, some of the thought leaders out there, what they're talking about AI, you know, there's a there's a likelihood that we will have some sort of, AI teammate. But also but if we turn it around and we ask buyers, what are you gonna do? Well, first and foremost, they wanna hide from sellers because you know that as soon as you basically show yourself, you're just a piece of meat and you just turn into a line on a CRM system. And everyone rings you up every month saying, are you gonna buy something? And and so what we do is that we hide.

Tim Hughes [00:31:23]:

So if we look at Kerry Cunningham's research, the average b to b enterprise, and this is based on data, the average b to b enterprise is anything between 12. So the buying cycle is between twelve and eighteen months. The sales cycle is three months. And so and and and this has been backed by two different people doing two different bits of research. So Outreach have done the the average sales cycle. So we know that the buying cycle, is where people go out and do you know, we have a meeting. The payroll system's not working. What do we do, Tracy? Well, Tracy says, I know somebody in, in, Worldpay or something, and and I'm gonna give them a call.

Tim Hughes [00:32:05]:

And Adam says, well, I know somebody in Oracle, in which it says, I'm gonna go on the Internet and have a look. So this whole thing takes place on social beforehand, but we actually don't go and talk to salespeople until that very short three month, piece. The other thing that, I wanted to say, which is a piece of advice, the one thing that I remember from the event that we attended yesterday, which was a, a very clever techie guy who was talking about AI and where to deploy it. And he said, when you're going to deploy AI in the world, do it to the boring things. Don't do it on any customer facing things. You will regret it. Yeah.

Tracy Borreson [00:32:50]:

And I think, again, like, I just wanna remind people, how does it feel for you when you are interacting with an agent?

Tim Hughes [00:33:00]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tracy Borreson [00:33:01]:

Because you have

Adam Gray [00:33:02]:

it it will.

Tracy Borreson [00:33:03]:

And something doesn't work, and you have to interact with an agent, and the agent can't solve your problem. Does that feel good for you?

Tim Hughes [00:33:11]:

And and, you know, and and is the and and so you're gonna go to the board and say, we got a new payroll system, have we? You never told us that. Well, I put the company's bank account details into the agent, and he went and bought one. I mean, really? Is that gonna happen? Of course not. There's gonna be some sort of conversation, isn't there? And I've spoken to a lot of people, and and I deliberately talk to people who are younger than me. And I say, if you had an option to put an AI agent and give it to your credit card details and for it to go and buy stuff, will you sign up for that? And not one single person has said yes.

Adam Gray [00:33:45]:

So we got some great questions or comments. So, Andrew, is impressions a barometer for seeing how many interactions your post creates, or is this just something that LinkedIn thinks people want to see?

Tracy Borreson [00:33:56]:

I would to answer this question, there was someone who approached me who told me they could get me 30,000 impressions on every single one of my posts. And I was like,

Richard Jones [00:34:08]:

let me

Tracy Borreson [00:34:08]:

go see how her content is performing. So I went to her profile and yeah, because you can't see other people's impressions. But assuming that she's doing what she's selling and getting all of these impressions, her engagement rates were, like, one, like, two comments. I was like, so you're telling me 30,000 impressions is supposed to get you two comments? Because I can get 300 impressions and get two comments. Yeah. So I don't know that that particularly answers the question, but it's just being like Adam mentioned earlier, it's not terrible as a barometer to see what's happening. Right? Like, are you getting more impressions on your content? Are you getting less impressions on your content? Is there specific content, like, themes that you post that get more impressions, which means the platform is pushing them out in front of more people? It's not bad to know, but it is also important to look at the relationship between impressions and engagements. And there isn't a there's it doesn't, by nature, exist.

Tracy Borreson [00:35:20]:

Just because you get more impressions doesn't mean you have more engagement.

Adam Gray [00:35:23]:

Yeah. So, I think there's an opportunity for a shout out for Mark. Hi, Mark.

Tim Hughes [00:35:29]:

Hi, Mark. Good to see you.

Adam Gray [00:35:31]:

Happens, but safety matters. So, yes, that would that I'm sure will be a great, a great newsletter.

Tim Hughes [00:35:37]:

So, Richard, just so you know, Mark tells jokes in the, usually tells jokes in the comments.

Richard Jones [00:35:42]:

Okay. That's good. Yeah. I I I this is joke jokes and then loose. It did it did it did it did draw a rice

Tim Hughes [00:35:49]:

with a small joke.

Tracy Borreson [00:35:50]:

Jokes. Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:35:54]:

Yeah. So,

Tim Hughes [00:35:56]:

Talisha. Talisha. Yes.

Tracy Borreson [00:35:58]:

Hi, Talisha.

Adam Gray [00:36:00]:

Yeah. Absolutely. It has to be about building relationships. You know, I think that that that building that familiarity is the key to being successful on social and indeed in business. You know, people don't spend money with people that they don't know, don't like, and don't trust. You know, it's it's a well known it's a well known It's

Tim Hughes [00:36:20]:

it's that's not completely true because I I bought BMW from a salesperson. BMW salesperson knew I didn't like.

Adam Gray [00:36:28]:

I I bet you made him suffer for that, though.

Tim Hughes [00:36:30]:

No. No. No. No. No.

Adam Gray [00:36:31]:

No. No. No.

Tim Hughes [00:36:32]:

No. No. No. No. No. No. No. But so yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:36:34]:

I'm just being

Tracy Borreson [00:36:34]:

I think there is I mean, do we talk about the know, like, trust factor in marketing all the time? But the the piece of that that I love that Talisha shared was Yeah. Accept advice from a familiar source.

Adam Gray [00:36:47]:

Yeah.

Tracy Borreson [00:36:47]:

Right? Because there's also people that I have trusted based on their level of expertise that I don't necessarily like. Now will I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a solution from someone that way? Probably not. But if I I think this is also we haven't really touched on this yet is the demonstration of expertise through this whole process. It's not just like showing up to show up and, like, be in someone's face. It's to be helpful, to to provide helpful things. Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:37:24]:

So so here here's a an interesting question, from living aesthetic. How can early stage startups effectively use social selling to build brand awareness without a large marketing budget? You know, it I I always think that that it's really interesting because when we talk to, companies that are thinking about social selling or thinking about using social selling, oftentimes some of the feedback that we get is, well, we've tried it already and it doesn't work. And, you know, you only get one chance to make a first impression. So so our general advice around this is that you need to make your profile look as compelling, interesting, friendly, and approachable as you possibly can. Because when somebody lands on it, they're going to jump to a conclusion about whether or not you are somebody that they would want to do business with or somebody that they would want to interact with or somebody that they would want to remember. So you need to make it as easy for people to remember and engage and and like you as it's possible to do. You need to connect to the people that you want to influence over time. Because if you've got a hundred connections and they're all in the wrong place, it doesn't matter what you do.

Adam Gray [00:38:46]:

You're not gonna interact with people that can buy your stuff. If, however, you've got a hundred connections in the right place, then everybody within your network that sees the stuff that you post you will be showcasing yourself in front of those people. And then lastly, you need to have a content strategy. And in its simplest terms, there are three kinds of content you need to share. You need to share content that shows that you understand your specialist subject. You know, we're in the social selling world. Therefore, we share content about social selling. We share our expertise with our audience that that so that the audience can see that we can walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

Adam Gray [00:39:31]:

The second area where people need to share content is they need to share content which resonates with their desired market. If you want to sell into the manufacturing industry, then sharing content, which talks about challenges that are being overcome in pharmaceutical or travel or leisure, actually, that's not that doesn't resonate with the audience that you want to talk to. Because we all know that when you go and pitch to a company, one of the questions they inevitably ask you is, have you ever worked with a company like us before? Because they want to see that you understand their pains. Even though that may not be relevant to what you do, they still want to know that you understand their pain. And then lastly, you need to share that personal content. And, got a comment from from somebody here. Social media started out as being mostly cat and food picks. Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:40:19]:

Cat and food pics still have their place, and not just cat and food pics. But at the end of the day, there needs to be the non challenging thing that people can and it may not be cat and food pics. It may be travel pics or family photos or activities or whatever. But, ultimately, it has to be something which makes somebody not afraid to engage with your content, and that is unlikely to be business.

Tim Hughes [00:40:46]:

And

Tracy Borreson [00:40:46]:

and I think

Tim Hughes [00:40:47]:

Just just to say, DLA Ignite has never spent a dollar on marketing. No. We've not bought an ad. We've never bought we've never made a cold call. We don't have an email list. We've never spent sent spam emails. We've never spent money on paid media or ads. We never have in that eight and a half years that we've been, business.

Tim Hughes [00:41:09]:

So can you so can you be successful and do it on a zero marketing budget?

Adam Gray [00:41:13]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:41:14]:

We're we're we're we're the reference side

Adam Gray [00:41:16]:

for it. Yeah. Absolutely.

Tracy Borreson [00:41:18]:

And, also, like, I'm a marketer. I don't I do social selling. I don't have I don't do paid marketing. And I think it's, again, one of these things where people think, in order to have a successful business, I have to do paid marketing. And there's I don't wanna pretend because I think there are benefits to doing some paid things. I have a LinkedIn sales navigator membership. Right? That is paid. So the if you want to go big and scale it, then there's some cost there.

Tracy Borreson [00:41:51]:

But, also, if you're looking at a LinkedIn sales navigator membership for a hundred and $20 a month versus spending $800 a month on digital ads, Right? Like, an $800 a month on digital ads would be a very tiny budget. Right? So, like, you're cutting that in a quarter and getting much more impact. So, I think it's important to look at when you have a a small marketing budget, how are things delivering in a meaningful way instead of just checking a box of I did a thing?

Adam Gray [00:42:23]:

Yeah. So so this this absolutely nails it, this comment. Thank you. Yeah. Agents shouldn't replace relationships. Authenticity is the key. And, yes, AI and agents definitely have a place in the back office, you know, helping do, helping to speed the the drudgery. The danger that we always see, though, is that people, people oftentimes do not want to do the work necessary.

Adam Gray [00:42:56]:

So that could be that you hire an agency to write your copy for you, for the post that you want to do or you hire an assistant to take over your profile to post stuff and interact with people. That's never worked in our experience. What has worked is where people swallow hard and invest the time in doing these things themselves. And, absolutely, agents enable you to free up the time to be able to focus on the stuff that you do customer facing. For for you to use an agent to to write your content for you or an agent to, or or an agency to write your content for you or an assistant to post on LinkedIn in on your behalf is rather like you sending an assistant to go to a networking event when you should be meeting chief executives and saying, well, I haven't got time. I'm too busy, so I'll send this person in my stead. But it That just doesn't make sense.

Richard Jones [00:43:54]:

Well, it it also also sort of marks you out as somebody who doesn't really know their stuff. You know, if you happen to rely on somebody else to write stuff that's compelling about what it is you're supposedly selling, then you kinda lose you're missing the point a bit, aren't you? I would have thought. It's just a personal opinion, but, I think, you know, most selling comes from, you know, the sort of the personal relationship. It comes from the heart, and it comes from the trust that you kind of emit by knowing your stuff, getting somebody else to doing it. No. It doesn't work.

Adam Gray [00:44:23]:

Yeah. So so, Mark, our our resident jokester, I once told a joke so bad, the audience started a support group. He then he then follows that up with his next comment saying, nothing wrong with a salmon colored polo shirt. Looks very smart on the right person. I can't help feeling that there's another line to be delivered. Is is is is that That's very unmarked like.

Tim Hughes [00:44:44]:

I think I think it's delivered. It's a it's it's the it's

Adam Gray [00:44:47]:

the backhanded compliment, isn't it?

Richard Jones [00:44:49]:

Are are there are there any other fish colored shirts out there?

Adam Gray [00:44:53]:

Yeah. Well, I'm sure I'm sure there are.

Richard Jones [00:44:55]:

A mackerel colored shirt, perhaps.

Adam Gray [00:45:01]:

Yeah. It it's an interesting one. Will the recent business hacking events affect how businesses think about how they show up on their online platforms? I think what what's interesting about that, certainly for me, is that, a lot of the the the recent hacking events have all been back office hacks. You know, there's been data breaches and and ecommerce sites going down. It hasn't been anybody taking over the customer facing part and hacking that yet.

Richard Jones [00:45:33]:

Well, I guess, if the ecommerce bit's being taken down, then that is an essential customer interface into the business. But I don't necessarily think anything sort of around that has a sort of a social relevance, really. I think it's just the nature of the way businesses are protecting themselves. Well, and

Tracy Borreson [00:45:57]:

I think I mean, like, if we look at the the concept behind the deep fake, right, I I think there is a fear for people putting out specifically audio and video content because now there are tools that can take that and deep fake you

Richard Jones [00:46:15]:

Mhmm. To do

Tracy Borreson [00:46:16]:

a thing. I mean, we also have to think about what is the ROI for a hacker. Right? So if somebody is going to go through all of the work to deep fake something, they're probably gonna deep fake somebody like Elon Musk or Donald Trump or another world leader or a big business owner.

Adam Gray [00:46:38]:

They're too late. They're already deep fakes.

Tracy Borreson [00:46:40]:

Yeah. But this is what I mean. So, like, we have this irrational fear, and I think especially, like, if you're creating a start up, if you're a small business owner. Right? Like, I mean, yes. The tools now are out there for that potential to exist, but the likelihood of it existing. And as well, I wanna talk about because somebody used the word authenticity, and that's kind of my jam. So when you are out in the world creating authentic brand experiences for people and you get deep faked, people know it's a deep fake because they know you. Right? Know, like, trust.

Tracy Borreson [00:47:18]:

They know who you are, and they're like, this feels weird.

Adam Gray [00:47:24]:

This is a great comment from Sidoff. I'm still amazed at the number of people online who try to pitch for business but don't have an updated social media profile picture or bio. It's a pretty basic red flag. It is. It it's staggering, isn't it? Because the natural default position for everybody these days is if if somebody approaches you or you're introduced to somebody, even if you meet them face to face and you the first thing you do is check them out on LinkedIn. You know, in a business context, you check them out on LinkedIn and see what it is they do, what they what they post about, who else is in their company, all of that stuff. So to not have that, in place seems ludicrous. And, Mike, again, how does CMOs get hired in 2025 without a LinkedIn profile picture? Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:48:11]:

Absolutely. You you There

Tim Hughes [00:48:13]:

was a, I there was a someone, recently said you need to have this person on the podcast. They're a PR person. I said, okay. So I went and looked at their LinkedIn profile. They have 459 connections. They were in their they they were about the same age as Tracy. It's like, how can you how can you be in PR? Because the the average person on the the average person on, LinkedIn has 930 connections, and and they'd only posted twice ever ever in their lives. It's like how

Tracy Borreson [00:48:46]:

because that says PR person to me.

Tim Hughes [00:48:49]:

Yeah. How how can I mean, it's like, you need to talk to this person? Yeah. But how can I I'm gonna so so I made a decision not to ask her to come on the show because of the fact that she's only got 459, and she's only posted twice? Even though the person said she's a great PR person, she can't be.

Richard Jones [00:49:09]:

But she should be buying your service.

Tim Hughes [00:49:12]:

Well well, of course, she can. She can. But, you know, it's like we we make this we it's it's not just coming to con jumping to conclusion. We make decisions based on it. There's a famous well, the I've I've not seen it for a long time. There's a a person that does LinkedIn influencer training on on LinkedIn, and she's not a a LinkedIn influencer.

Adam Gray [00:49:33]:

Yeah. But I I saw I I I wrote a post about it the other day where somebody had said about how, they were a LinkedIn social trainer. And, they had approached somebody and said, I can show you how to do it. And the person had looked at their profile and said, well, that's not very impressive, is it? And they said, I'm too busy doing other people's making them successful. And it's like, no. It's either important or it isn't. If it's important, you need to walk the walk. You nowhere is there a better opportunity to you for you to show how good you are on a social network than on your own profile on a social network.

Tracy Borreson [00:50:14]:

And and that that's your own Kool Aid, I believe it's called. Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:50:18]:

Yeah. But

Adam Gray [00:50:19]:

but but it's like you you you if I'm helping you, Tracy, create a compelling brand, your boss might say, I don't want you saying that sort of thing, or you might feel constrained by the company brand. But if it's you and your own profile, there is no excuse for you not to put yourself forward exactly as you want people to see you. And, you know, we got some great comments Some great comments. From people saying, yeah, this is this is just, you know Go on. No. Here we are. Wondering the same thing. Sadly, marketers tend to be pretty bad at marketing themselves, especially online.

Adam Gray [00:50:53]:

Yeah. It just is is

Tim Hughes [00:50:55]:

Tove's Tove's, comment is, problem is also that in b two b marketing, that marketing equals advertising. Where marketing is your tactical and strategic things you do generate more revenue.

Adam Gray [00:51:09]:

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and, you know, that but but, again, you know, in in the b two b world, advertising is very well, in fact, any any world, advertising is very glamorous. You get to go on photoshoots and you get to meet interesting people and you get to loads of kind of promotional merchandise and, you know, spend loads of money on media and all of this stuff. The fact it fails to deliver, certainly in the b two b world, it fails to deliver any measurable impact on your sales these days.

Tim Hughes [00:51:39]:

So so Yogesh, Yogesh, ChAFTA basically has made a comment. I I also get at least two two to four invites on LinkedIn. When you check their profile, there's someone checking profile. You can see the account was open ten years ago, and the profile pic was updated one month ago. Basically, it's probably a stock photo, and it's clearly a deep fake, and it's a fraud fraudulent account. I agree. There's a question there from, Aram, Raffel, which basically, says, if someone fumbles the first impression in social selling, is there a way to recover it, or is the opportunity always last?

Adam Gray [00:52:22]:

Yeah. Easy enough to recover. You know? I I think that the key thing here is that you just need to make sure that you're always doing it better than you were before. So if I approach you and my profile is really useless, you know, I've got no content on it at all, and you think this person's an idiot and I don't want anything to do with them, as long as you don't actually block me, there's nothing to stop me making my profile better and then a month later sending you another connection request with a fantastic profile that makes me look like I really do know what I'm talking about. And, you know, I I think the key thing to remember is that we're all busy. I have better things to do than remember somebody who hasn't impressed me and and and invest any of my time and effort in in doing that. And it's like when when we, you know, we say to people about you must publish content. It's it's one of the cornerstones of being successful in this space.

Adam Gray [00:53:19]:

And they say what happens if I make a mistake and it goes viral and everybody laughs at me? Don't flatter yourself because for the first year no one's even going to be advancing in your direction. You have to earn the right for people to point and laugh at you, and you haven't earned that yet. And it's the same with your profile. So, yes, you absolutely can climb back from from not having a great profile and not making a good impression.

Tim Hughes [00:53:43]:

And Andrew Tlesser says, and and he's quite right, people will allow for mistakes and repeated mistakes as a problem. I have a mate who has a very successful, YouTube, music YouTube channel, And he gets bet more responses, more engagement on the videos where he didn't where he's not edited out the and the because he's more it's it's, you know, it's authentic.

Adam Gray [00:54:07]:

Isn't it? It's more authentic. Yeah. So so and we we are pretty much out of time. So so Ruben Hughes, says I

Tim Hughes [00:54:14]:

love a Hughes. Thank you, Ruben.

Adam Gray [00:54:17]:

No relation. When's the best time to send a follow-up after a face to face? As quickly as possible. And the reason for that is that you can't remember who you met at an event three months ago. You can remember who you met at an event earlier today. So best to follow it up. Strike while we're

Tracy Borreson [00:54:35]:

day. Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:54:36]:

Yeah. As as quickly as you can, send a connection request saying, hi. It was great to meet you yesterday at the event. Love to catch up and chat more about it or whatever. Because remember, in the b two b space, success comes from conversations. So everything you do on social is about getting a conversation with somebody. That's that's where this bit of the world finishes for us. Everything that comes after that is about sales.

Adam Gray [00:55:06]:

So, we are at time. What a fantastic, comments question.

Tim Hughes [00:55:13]:

Thank you so much for everybody and all the comments and and the jokes, Mark.

Adam Gray [00:55:18]:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Tim Hughes [00:55:19]:

Keith, I didn't cover it.

Adam Gray [00:55:20]:

There there was a there was a sign off joke from Mark, wasn't there? The the

Tracy Borreson [00:55:25]:

If you go out to buy a pink shirt and the salesman offers you a salmon shirt, do you think something fishy is going on?

Adam Gray [00:55:35]:

It's not pink. It's salmon. I'm just swimming against the fashion current. Just the the the man of many puns. So, thank you all so much for for joining us. Thank you. You've been a fantastic audience. Obviously, a fantastic panel, but then they're they're my buddies and colleagues, so they're always a fantastic panel.

Tim Hughes [00:55:57]:

Have you sorted out the QR code?

Adam Gray [00:55:59]:

I have. And I was just about to I was just about to show everybody. Yeah. Yeah. So, if you would like to be a guest on our show, to share some of your expertise and your knowledge, to share a viewpoint on something or just be part of the fun, then please click oh, that's the one I want, isn't it? Yeah. It's not quite as professional as when Bertrand did it, but it is at least a QR code. Yeah. So, down here, scan the QR code, and please take a slot and come and join us.

Adam Gray [00:56:35]:

We'd love to have new guests on, and this is never, we hope, a sales pitch. This is always about sharing interesting viewpoints, trying to entertain you, the audience, and to share some expertise that we or the guests of of of the week might have. So, thank you all very much indeed. I hope to see you all again next week as does do my fellow panelists. And until then, goodbye and have a great weekend, everybody.#SocialSellingTips #SalesEngagement #DigitalSales #SocialSelling #DigitalSelling #SocialEnablement #LinkedInLive #Podcast