In this episode of The Digital Download, we delve into the nuances of social selling in B2B with Alex Abbott, a seasoned sales professional and social selling specialist. With over 30 years of experience, Alex has honed his skills in leveraging social media to build relationships, establish trust, and drive business growth. He is the architect of the Conversation Operating System, a method designed to tackle pipeline challenges in the B2B landscape.

Join us as we explore key approaches to successful social selling, including:

* The importance of humanized interactions in a digital world.

* Building trust and rapport through social media engagement.

* Creating compelling content that resonates with your target audience.

* Leveraging social listening to identify opportunities and address customer needs.

* Measuring the impact of social selling activities on business outcomes.

Alex's insights stem from his extensive experience in various leadership roles, including Head of Marketing Cloud at Oracle CX and Sales Director at Responsys. He is also a co-founder of Critical Convo and SalesTV.live, platforms dedicated to empowering sales professionals with modern selling techniques.

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

This week we were joined by our Special Guest -

• Alex Abbott, Founder of Supero, a proud DLA Ignite partner

This week's Host was -

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

Panelists included -

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

• Adam Gray, Co-founder of a DLA Ignite

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-01-24

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:04]:

Good morning, good afternoon, and good day wherever you may be joining us from. And welcome to a new edition of the digital download, the longest running weekly business talk show on LinkedIn Live. Now globally syndicated on tune in radio through IBGR, the world number one business talk, use and strategy radio network. Today, we're diving into key approaches to successful social selling in B2B. We have a special guest, Alex Abbott, to help us with the discussion. Alex is a seasoned sales professional and social selling specialist.

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:52]:

With over 30 years of experience, Alex has all his skills in leveraging social media to build relationship, establish trust, and drive business growth. He's the architect of the conversational operational operating system, sorry, a method designed to tackle pipeline challenges in the B2B landscape. But before we bring Alex on, let's go around the set and introduce everyone. While we're doing that, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, King them, and have them join us? We strive to make the digital download an interactive experience. Audience participation is highly encouraged. So, Tim, why don't you kick us off?

Tim Hughes [00:01:39]:

Thank you. Welcome everybody to The Digital Download, our Friday extravaganza. 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 bars and change

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:57]:

makers. Adam.

Adam Gray [00:01:59]:

Hi, everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I'm Tim's business partner, also cofounder of DLA Ignite. And I'm I'm very much looking forward to this the conversation that we're gonna be having today because one of the key things, is that there seems to be, in the marketplace, a huge amount of mystique around social. Well, I'll create a post. It'll go viral, and everything will be alright. And, actually, what we all know from having been, implementing and practitioners of this for some time is that the way you get success is graphed. You do things, you refine those things, you measure those things, and and you you keep a note of what's working and what isn't.

Adam Gray [00:02:39]:

So hearing Alex talk about this will be really exciting.

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:43]:

And clearly, we're anxious to hear about this. Myself, Bertrand Godillot, I am the, founder and managing partner of Adi Simus and Co, a very proud DLA Ignite partner. As I said, this week on the Digital Download, we'll speak with Alex Abbott. Alex's insight stem from his extensive experience in various leadership roles, including Head of Marketing Cloud at Oracle Customer Experience and Sales Director at Responsys. He is also a co founder of CriticalConvo and SalesTV. Live, platforms dedicated to empowering sales professionals with modern selling techniques. Let's bring him on.

Tim Hughes [00:03:26]:

Hi, Alex.

Bertrand Godillot [00:03:29]:

Good afternoon. Welcome.

Alex Abbott [00:03:32]:

Hello. Hello. Hello. It's great to be here. It's been a while since I've been on the download. I've thoroughly enjoyed my time as a as a kind of a co presenter panelist. So, it feels weird being on the other side as a guest.

Bertrand Godillot [00:03:50]:

It it does. It does for me as well, Alex, indeed. Alex, let's start by having you, tell us a little bit more about you, your background, and how and what led you to where you are today.

Alex Abbott [00:04:04]:

Yeah. So, for those that don't know me, I left school at 16. I was a car mechanic, an apprentice car mechanic when I left school. Didn't really know what I wanted to do, but a mate of mine was an apprentice carpenter, and he had a really nice car, Ford Fiesta XR 2. And I thought I wanted a nice car, so I wanted to earn some earn some money. So, decided to become an apprentice, as an apprentice car mechanic. Anyway, sort of 3 years had gone by and I realized I wanted to do something different. I wanted to to earn some money, and, following my dad's footsteps as a businessman, but I had no sales experience.

Alex Abbott [00:04:48]:

So I applied for, a job as a Kirby vacuum cleaner salesperson. That was my first experience of sales. Took me 7 years to eventually break into business to business sales, and then it took me another 6 years to actually learn how to sell software and services properly. And then kind of fast forward, I've had a sort of 25 year career in b to b sales, left the corporate world in 2020 and set up Sapiro. Sapiro providing sales as a service initially to tech companies, working with my my 2 eldest sons, Jordan and Jensen. And after that 1st year, I realized, you know, a lot had changed in the world of b to b sales. And we were in this inflection point where buyer behavior had changed so much. I mean, it had been changing for years, but it reached that point kind of post COVID where it didn't matter what we did as salespeople.

Alex Abbott [00:05:55]:

It was very difficult to generate conversations and pipeline and and impact revenue. And so that's when I met or remet Adam and and Tim and decided to pivot the business from providing sales as a service to becoming a training business and providing social selling, training, and coaching. I've been on a 4 year journey, almost 4 year journey, really becoming an expert at social selling and looking at how I can optimize the approach, change the approach so that, you know, those companies, people within those companies that are trying to do social selling can actually do it effectively and also, understand how to operationalize social selling so they can start to create conversations at scale. Kind of brings us to where we are today.

Bertrand Godillot [00:06:51]:

Quite a journey indeed. Yeah. Alex, let's start with a foundational question. How can organizations make sure their social selling strategy works?

Alex Abbott [00:07:10]:

So there are a couple of things that I found that, companies were were missing a trick with when they were looking at upskilling their teams to do social selling. One was they were measuring the wrong stuff So they would, you know, they would give their team some training and then expect their teams to perform with this new with these new skills. The reality was they were still measuring traditional approaches like how many emails they were sending, how many calls they were making, and they weren't measuring the things that really matter when it comes to social selling. Things like network growth, follower growth, things like, the number of, posts, the frequency in which you're posting, but more importantly, the the percentage of those posts that are humanized posts that are more personal, perhaps more aligned to the individual's core values and beliefs. Other things like commenting. And so this notion of inserting yourself into social networking conversations and the quality of those comments, encouraging debate, encouraging conversation. You know, after all, that's what, you know, that's what salespeople love to do. They love to talk to their prospects.

Alex Abbott [00:08:32]:

So why not do that on social media? And when those things aren't being measured, they don't drive the right behaviors from from the salespeople that have, you know, have learned these new skills. And and then you have this sort of, you know, this battle internally between the business, the organization, the sales ops team, measuring different things. The other thing was, the I I saw that was missing was the support needed to change. You know that personal change and so you know change is hard at the best of times for any individual or any organization, but when it means putting yourself out there on social media, it's incredibly difficult. It's often scary for many people to put themselves out there. And so, you know, looking at providing, you know coaching support to help that individual really understand you know the emotions that they're going through when when when they're being asked to do something they feel incredibly uncomfortable about and then helping them see a way forward. Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:09:49]:

What so that's that's pretty interesting because when we when we talk sometimes, when we talk about with with, you know, other people and and salespeople about about social selling. It's it's, often down to sending sending messages, sending email messages, using LinkedIn sales navigator, for instance. From what you just said, I I I haven't heard the the impression that what you're talking about is radically different. Is it?

Alex Abbott [00:10:25]:

Yeah. Yeah. Very different. The best way I think to kind of picture it is you know I think I think about you know really 4 things when it comes to social selling the first is personal brand and actually you could think about these four things as levers that. You know salespeople can kind of visualize pulling those levers and when they pull those levers it increases the probability of them being more successful with social selling and so that first lever is really personal brand and within personal brand, there's kind of 2 sides of that coin one is. Your static you know social presence, you know the the passive social presence that you might have and that could be if we look at LinkedIn a whole host of things on your LinkedIn profile that if you change them, you know, like your about section. So if you go and look at my about section, I tell a story about me, the longer version that I told you at the beginning of of this show. But it's something that's static.

Alex Abbott [00:11:41]:

It stays on the profile, and there's about 30 odd things that you can change that you can align to your personal brand, the things that you want to be known for. And. The other side of that is that the dynamic things the things that you know the way you behave the things that you do the conversations that you insert yourself into And so those are the 3 levers for me are really, you know, engagement. So that's really about growing your network, curating your network. It's, you know, it's commenting. It's inserting yourself into conversations regularly doing it on a daily basis in front of the people that you wanna do business with. You know that next lever is content. It's the creation of content, but it's also the variety of that content so that you you know.

Alex Abbott [00:12:37]:

You've brought always bringing something new to the table. You know, video, articles, blog posts, photos of your of yourself, you know, humanized content. And then the final the final lever is is really influence. And, you know, if you're focusing on the first three levers and then the quality and the depth and how much you can pull those levers, the more influence that you'll create within the network among the people that you really wanna do business with.

Bertrand Godillot [00:13:15]:

Alright. So how do you measure that influence, basically? I I think you've got quite a, you know, some some experience and and some time measuring some of your results. So I'd like to be I'm quite interested. I think the audience would be quite interested into understanding, what are the the actual KPIs that you are looking after and what are the results that you see.

Alex Abbott [00:13:48]:

Yeah. So it it really starts with, you know, measuring as much as you can. So there's there's measures that sort of, you know, help hold you accountable for doing the activities. And then there are measures that will help you direct that focus into the places that you want to have the most influence. So on a on a weekly basis, I'm tracking network growth, follow the growth, the number of comments, the number of posts, the percentage of those posts that are humanized posts because that's really what penetrates that zone of resistance that that helps you be seen by those people. It's the number of conversations that I'm generating or that we're generating off the back of of that activity. It's the percentage of those conversations that are progressing to a meaningful next step, which is really important because it's one thing getting the conversation with you know with the people that you wanna do business with. But when you've done your, you know when you're when you're social selling strategy is kind of working for you.

Alex Abbott [00:15:15]:

It's more obvious you know kind of who you are what you do that you're genuine and authentic you're worth having a conversation with so when you have that conversation that conversation is more likely to progress, you know, with a meaningful next step agreed. And, you know, part of that conversation comes down to the quality and what you say it on that call. But for me, I think that's still all part of social selling you know storytelling for me is a big part of social selling and being able to then continue that story in person or on a on a call is really important. I think to aligning you know building rapport and and aligning on value. And and then you know, depending on. You know who you're targeting, you know what your ideal customer profile is. Which persona then I think it's important to measure the impact that you're having within those accounts that you want to do business with how well connected are you within those accounts? You know the number of people that I talk to that. You know, I asked the question so you know, tell me what what are your top five accounts that you're working on How many connections do you have in those accounts? Oh, well, I've got 2 or 3.

Alex Abbott [00:16:39]:

Well, you're practically invisible, so don't expect to be doing business with those companies anytime soon.

Bertrand Godillot [00:16:47]:

So one

Tim Hughes [00:16:48]:

of the things that you've been doing, Alex, is that you've been you've been you you've created a a benchmark, haven't you?

Alex Abbott [00:16:54]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:16:55]:

So for for 2 years now, you've actually so so those those those measures that you talked about, you've actually been measuring those things across a whole bunch of people. Yeah. And and you've enabled you to so so one of the one of the criticisms or one of the objections that we quite often get is that social selling is just messing about on social media. And what what and what is the the the basis that you're building up to ultimately get revenue? So tell us about your your benchmark.

Alex Abbott [00:17:27]:

Yeah. Well, it's I mean, it first started, yeah, 2 years ago when myself, Jordan, and Jensen were measuring everything that we were doing on a weekly basis. And then that grew to clients and associates, those that were willing, basically, to contribute to that benchmark study. We've you know we've done other kind of pilot studies with a client with the Institute of Sales Professionals together with the client. And really we've been trying to understand what. You need to do. In order to achieve commercial objectives that really start with the conversation. But more importantly, how can we then start to predict performance through a prescribed set of social selling behaviors? And that's that that really helped me develop what I just described a moment ago those 4 levers that that that what I've described a moment ago is is the superior social selling value framework.

Alex Abbott [00:18:36]:

You know, it's the it's really the ability to provide guidance to salespeople so that they can follow some sort of path to value. The benchmark also really helped when it came to understanding. The level of maturity of people doing social selling. And you know we were we clearly understood we clearly understood kind of the best practice and what social selling mastery was or is, but to expect anyone else to reach social selling Mastery is. Well I think foolish you know, II wasted a lot of time telling people what they should be doing, but most people can't actually get there. They can't actually do it and so the benchmark study helped us develop a social selling maturity assessment to really understand you know where people are today so that then I could provide you know more tailored training more tailored recommendations to help each person kind of improve through the levels. Yeah. I don't know if I answered your question, Tim, but there's there's lots of things that are kind of spinning off the the benchmark study as a result, which

Tim Hughes [00:20:03]:

Which it's more about what I'm what I was trying to get to was it's the you know, if as a sales leader looking in, you go social selling. Okay. Yeah. Whatever. What what that is is people basically playing around on social media. I don't want people to do that. What I want is people to get on the phones and actually sell something. You know, there's a, someone put out a blog just in the other last couple of days saying why the silent sales floor was killing sales.

Tim Hughes [00:20:27]:

Because the view is is that people are just messing about on on social and actually doing nothing. Whereas what what you seem to be saying to me is is not only do you seem to have some sort of process that people walk through, but you're measuring it as well so much so that you know that when you move these levers, you're gonna get some level of result.

Alex Abbott [00:20:48]:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, I think it's important to to be really clear to our audience that so I can tell you some of the numbers from from the benchmark.

Tim Hughes [00:21:03]:

Yeah, I think it'd be useful,

Alex Abbott [00:21:05]:

but I think it's I think it's really important to kind of preface that with the fact that. You know, there are different types of organizations out there selling to different types of people and different types of organizations. So, you know, I often made the mistake of talking quite excitedly about the fact that social selling you can get 10% conversation rate blows calling out of the water. You know you can get 39% call progression rate because these are the average statistics and did you know that you can engage with 6.4 times more stakeholders than you can or that we've seen companies engage with using traditional methods. And that by using social selling, you're more likely to engage the C suite earlier and when you engage the C suite earlier within the sales process, you increase sales velocity by 9.2 times. I mean these numbers are just insane. I mean there's no denying that so works

Tim Hughes [00:22:13]:

to go through them again because you went through them really quickly.

Alex Abbott [00:22:15]:

Alex I'm gonna go through them again, but I finally did that on purpose because I wanted them to come back to if you're a BDR, those numbers might excite you. If you're an AE, engaging with 6.4 times more stakeholders should excite you because the more state the more stakeholders you can engage with, the more likely you are to be able to tailor your value proposition to them and improve close rates, reduce sales cycle sales cycles and increase average order value. But then, you know, if we look at, professional services, for example, and the the research the the new research that Matt Dixon's about to to launch, Where he's found the professional services organizations 5 years ago, we're in a we're we're in quite a, you know a luxurious position because 76% of businesses were coming back to them. They were loyal to them to to buy more services from them, you know, and they're the they're the companies that have the relationships with the tech companies so the tech companies stay close to them because they get to sell more tech. Now, you know if we look at. You know 12 to 18 months ago that's 76% had dropped to somewhere around 50% and it's projected to get to 30 something percent in the next 5 years so loyalty is diminishing. Yet you've got many consultants within these professional services businesses that, that are doing the selling. They're doing the selling.

Alex Abbott [00:23:59]:

They're doing the delivery. You know, they're seen as the trusted advisers. And many times, I've had professional services companies tell me, well, you know, our consultants can't do social selling. They're way too busy. Well, these guys need to wake up pretty soon because they need to be developing their personal brand. They need to be inserting themselves into conversations on social media so that they can actually deepen the relationships they've got and strengthen those so that they, you know, can tackle this downward spiral of diminishing, you know, loyalty and trust.

Adam Gray [00:24:37]:

But do do these people think that this behavior is, I guess, for one of a better better term, do they feel that this is beneath them? You know, I've been a delivery expert in my field, and I'm an acknowledged expert, and I've been doing this for 25 years. I don't need to do this stuff. And and is that a barrier?

Alex Abbott [00:25:03]:

Yeah. Maybe or maybe they just don't know they think it's yeah. They think it's oh it's dirty. It's prospecting and there's this confusion between social selling and business development, I think.

Tim Hughes [00:25:21]:

But but isn't this just about, you know, the the the frog in the saucepan,

Alex Abbott [00:25:27]:

which is

Tim Hughes [00:25:27]:

the Oh. In the saucepan. Which is when you when you put the frog in a saucepan, and you turn as you turn up the heat, it doesn't actually feel the relatively difference in the the temperature of the water.

Alex Abbott [00:25:38]:

And so

Tim Hughes [00:25:38]:

what you can do is you can boil a frog in the saucepan because as you turn it up, it basically gradually boils. Because as I say, it doesn't feel the difference. If you take a saucepan of boiling water and you put a frog in it, it jumps out because it feels that it's, because it feels the temperature of the water. So what happens is that we have this bias, relative change of of of pace of whatever it is that's going on around us. Yeah. So even though even though you can come up with those figures, they go, Yeah. Yeah. That's that's the but we're different.

Adam Gray [00:26:10]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:26:11]:

You know, we're still able to do that. We're still able to to you know, it's no. It's all still about the golf course, which Adam and I were told by a professional services organization that we didn't know anything. We didn't understand business. It was, look. You guys, you don't really understand business, they said to us. So what happens is we go out to the the golf course with the CEO, and he signs the deal. He signs the deal.

Tim Hughes [00:26:33]:

That's all I said. And and and, and that's it. We don't need your social selling rubbish.

Alex Abbott [00:26:39]:

Yeah. It's a great analogy. Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:26:41]:

And and so and so so I I understand that those figures, but but that relatively changed because we don't. You know, it's this it's this thing that that that we we because of the bias, we we don't we don't see that change.

Alex Abbott [00:26:55]:

Yeah. The, the book is, that Matt Dixon's launching this year is the the activator advantage, and the researchers found that those consultants that are most successful in professional services are the ones that there were 3 trades. I think one of them was business development. Yeah consistent with their business development relationship building. So, you know, the the difference today is, you know, you can't rely on on doing that the in the old ways. You know, there's not enough networking opportunities per se.

Tim Hughes [00:27:31]:

So so going back to your data Yeah. And and working through those figures again, which you went scoop. So so you you you said that based on your data, what was the first one? The the the, was it 10 10 meetings or something?

Alex Abbott [00:27:49]:

So the the first one is we call it the the conversation rate, the the call rate. So the percentage of calls that you book and complete with And when

Tim Hughes [00:28:03]:

you say call, this isn't just DM ing people on social. This is about having an actual call with somebody where you speak to them. You actually speak

Alex Abbott [00:28:11]:

to them. Yeah. Okay. Right. Yeah. So the average over, you know, 2 years amongst a range of seniority and maturity experiences is 10%.

Adam Gray [00:28:27]:

So 10% of the people that you ask for a call, say yes.

Alex Abbott [00:28:32]:

Exactly. Not just say yes, but you actually complete the call. You have the call.

Adam Gray [00:28:37]:

That's that's staggering, isn't it?

Alex Abbott [00:28:40]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:28:40]:

Because if you take if you take, cold calling, generally, that has a 99% failure rate. Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:28:48]:

Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. And it's, you know, there's some there's some things to bear in mind in terms of, you know, how quickly you can get there. But, you know, a salesperson with a couple of years experience can get to kind of around the 4% mark relatively quickly and then grow from there. So we we we definitely see you know we definitely see experience and seniority having an impact ranging from somewhere between 4 13 a half percent conversation rate.

Tim Hughes [00:29:22]:

So the average SDR with a with a the average SDR with a a good SDR can go from a 1% core rate to a 4% core rate in weeks, months. Absolutely. But yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:29:36]:

Yeah. Yeah. The other thing to bear in mind is depending on, you know, depending on the focus. So. You know I've worked with 1 guy in the US. I think you know him tech. You know he worked with his SDR directly in partnership working a set of 50 accounts. In 5 months, they generated one meeting from those accounts.

Tim Hughes [00:30:07]:

Using traditional legacy sales methods. Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:30:11]:

Exactly. Cold calling and emailing. Within the 1st 4 weeks of deploying social selling, they had 2 meetings. And after 5 months, like a mirror, almost a mirror image period, I think it was 36 meetings in 16 of those accounts. They're averaging sort of 2.4 meetings per account, and he was engaging with 6 times the number of stakeholders.

Adam Gray [00:30:43]:

Hold on. So it took him 5 months to get one meeting. It took the next 5 months to get 36 meetings doing it your way. Yeah. So 36 times the success. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:30:58]:

Exactly. So to any sales leaders watching this this show, what would 36 if nothing else gets better, if the the salespeople don't get better at managing the meetings, closing the business, pitching stuff, if everything else remains constant, this delivers 36 times as much business. Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:31:21]:

And not everybody performs at that level, but, yes, that is

Adam Gray [00:31:25]:

Oh, some people have performed better.

Tim Hughes [00:31:27]:

But but you but you said that, yes, some people perform better. Because you we we we talked earlier on about, an SDR with a couple of years work could get 4% response. But you said the average was 10%. Yeah. So there's so there's some people are getting more than, 10 meetings

Alex Abbott [00:31:46]:

per week. Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:31:48]:

Well, I mean, just just I mean, to break it down, Alex, 2 meetings a day for an for an average STR to get 2 meetings a day with their ICP, that's out of this world. Yeah. It's unbelievable.

Alex Abbott [00:32:03]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:32:04]:

Which is kind of which is kind of why why I wanted to invite you on here because I wanted to hear it from you. So and this is true.

Alex Abbott [00:32:12]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And and, you know, the those that, you know, those that can't or don't achieve these sorts of numbers are quite simply the ones that aren't following the prescription. And you've you've you

Tim Hughes [00:32:28]:

you said that you did some work with the the ISP. So, I mean, it's you know, you've got you know, this isn't Alex in his bedroom, you know, making stuff up.

Alex Abbott [00:32:41]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:32:41]:

This is where you've actually got an outside organization to actually, I'm trying to think of the correct terminology. I'm not in academia. Holiday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so so it's, you know, having that outside, view of the data.

Tim Hughes [00:32:57]:

So, anyway, so so let's so let's go through this. So so an SDR, an average SDR, and then all sales leaders will tell you that none of my sales SDRs are average. They're all higher than average. But the average SDR can get 10 meetings. Okay. So how how are what are they doing with those meetings? How are they converting them?

Alex Abbott [00:33:18]:

Yeah. So you say 10 meetings. So this is this is this is ongoing. This is 10% of those that they ask. And so, you know, when they're when they're developing, you know, their personal brand, you know, when they're working on, you know, understanding, identifying what they wanna be known for. And it's clear to their audience that they are a trusted adviser in their space. Not only that, that they're genuine and authentic people worth having a conversation with, and they're engaging in a credible way. So the biggest difference really if we simplify it, it's instead of sending insight based sales messages all all of the time that are ignored.

Alex Abbott [00:34:05]:

You know when your recipient doesn't know you'd like you or trust you, you know you're really spending the time to build that affinity build that rapport, you you know, developing your personal brand, inserting yourself into conversations that, you know, show you as a credible individual, you know, a trusted adviser. You know, when you when you reach out to these people, they're more likely to have a conversation with you. Or when the time's right, they reach out to you. So we've not talked about inbound yet, but it creates a sense of of inbound as as well. So, you know, looking at your territory as a whole and all of the stakeholders that you want to engage with across that territory when you're deploying this strategy and reaching out in a in a, you know, uh-uh a relationship first approach, that's when 10% that's when we're seeing 10% of everybody you ask actually have a call with you. And 39% of those calls progress to a meaningful next step and that you know that varies that varies greatly depending on the value proposition how well they're trained. For example, Jordan, who you know very well his core progression rate is 22%. I think from memory and.

Alex Abbott [00:35:42]:

But what's important to know is his his. His his pipeline qualification rate or deal qualification rate from those calls that have progressed is 52%.

Tim Hughes [00:36:01]:

That's that's fantastic.

Bertrand Godillot [00:36:02]:

Pretty impressive.

Tim Hughes [00:36:03]:

And I do I do remember Jordan basically saying once, I've got so many meetings. I don't know what to do.

Alex Abbott [00:36:09]:

Yeah. Yeah. He was hit.

Tim Hughes [00:36:11]:

I mean, how many SDRs say that? 0. Yeah. So so so in terms of the the when you say the call progression, so that's about, you say temp so so you're so in fact, you're gonna ask more people than 10%, but 10% actually have a call. And I'm gonna say ask you again, this is a conversation, isn't it? It's a call like a Zoom call. It is. Yeah. Or a telephone conversation. And then of those, in terms of the progression, 39% then basically go on, and you've got some sort of next action.

Tim Hughes [00:36:44]:

So in effect, you're moving them on in terms of the sales, sales process. Yeah. Yeah.

Bertrand Godillot [00:36:52]:

There's something also that, maybe it's what is worth mentioning or at at least asking. We we talk a lot about calls, but how long are these calls?

Alex Abbott [00:37:04]:

Well, typically 30 minutes because it's quite often it's the initial call is a rapport building call. And so, you know, you're you're kinda, you know, ideally, you're swapping personal stories and so a big a big part of the program, my program is about storytelling and teaching people how to tell, well, how to design initially different stories depending on where they are in the in the in the sales process. So. I often ask people. You know if you had an opportunity to tell a success story versus your personal story when you've met someone for the first time more than 70% of the time people say, well, a success story. I need to tell them how great we are. And usually, it's a success story about how great they are as opposed to how great they've helped. Yeah, how how well they've helped a client become successful.

Alex Abbott [00:38:09]:

And actually that's the first mistake because nobody. Especially if you've met them for the first time. They're likely to be very skeptical of who you are because you're a salesperson and if if you start telling a success story straight out of the gate, they don't believe you period. So it's really important to tell your personal story and swap personal stories first because then you create a bond. And you may even, you know, may even not get to the success story on that initial call because you're just trying to build a report. And that often takes 30 minutes, you know, 10 to 15 minutes minutes each way. You've built rapport and then before the end of the call, you're saying, well, you know, or or even they've asked the question, oh, you know, when they you told them what you do. Well, actually, I've I've I've like to learn more about that.

Alex Abbott [00:39:09]:

That's interesting.

Tim Hughes [00:39:10]:

I I think I think correct me if I'm wrong, Bertram. But what what we've seen is this is this thing where 5 years ago, people went people were basically going and asking to for demos, and they said give me 30 minutes of your time. And then what happened is that, 3 years ago, where they started saying give me 20 minutes of your time. And currently what we we understand the thing is is that people are saying give me 3 minutes of your time. Mhmm. And basically what they're asking for is 3 minutes of time to pitch. Whereas what you're saying is that give me 30 minutes of your time, and what we're gonna do is that we're gonna build, trust and and and a relationship. Mhmm.

Tim Hughes [00:39:52]:

Can can I pick up on LinkedIn user's question?

Bertrand Godillot [00:39:55]:

Sorry. I've got a question from the chat, and then Yeah. Link yes. Maybe. Alright. When you say a 10% call agree rate, is this from the first message sent being a call request?

Alex Abbott [00:40:10]:

Yeah. We never request a call from the first message. The the first message is really the connection if you're not connected. It's the connection request. And there's no ask there.

Bertrand Godillot [00:40:27]:

Yeah.

Alex Abbott [00:40:28]:

This is you know this is you know if we simplify it. It's the 3rd message. But there's a lot more that goes into it other than just the the direct message

Bertrand Godillot [00:40:41]:

of course,

Alex Abbott [00:40:42]:

that's just you know a very small part of the overall picture.

Adam Gray [00:40:48]:

But, Alex, so the this the the way you've described this, this is incredibly compelling. And the way you've described about getting on a call and having a chat to someone and getting to know them and Swapping stories is like, you know, I'm gonna invite you to the football match, and we'll spend the day chilling out and having a few beers and and watching the match. And, salespeople know all of this stuff already. Yeah. But they're simply not doing it, are they? They're they're they're somehow thinking that the answer is with no context whatsoever. This they're reaching out to somebody who doesn't know them from Adam, and they're sending them a, an InMail which basically lists the products and services. We're top quartile for this. We're really good.

Adam Gray [00:41:39]:

We can offer you the following services. And not surprisingly, those go into the bin. So how do you break that cycle? Because clearly, the the good thing about sending one of those emails is that it plays to the salesperson's belief that you've gotta get your no quickly. That's that's where success lies. You've gotta say, no. I don't want this. And sure enough, sending emails to people is a way of getting to know quickly from everybody, sadly. Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:42:07]:

So and the nice thing about that is that I can take exactly the same message, and I can just I can just hose down the mountainside of LinkedIn with these messages going out to a bunch of people that look like they're kind of in my ICP. So how how do you break that cycle? How do you get people to say or how do you how do you convince people that what they need to do is just just relax? Is it about getting to know people first?

Alex Abbott [00:42:31]:

Yeah. It's difficult. It really is difficult, and some are more up for it than than others. It really depends on, you know, how far how much pain they felt, you know, where they are. Are they at the end are they at the end of their tether? The other thing the other variable that's really important here is the organization and and what does the leadership think that the leadership team giving the support in order to make the transformation needed in order to sustainably follow this new approach.

Tim Hughes [00:43:12]:

Because because one of the things about sale sales is we want instant gratification, isn't it? Yeah. So so so the the so the the request that LinkedIn user, when you say, sorry, LinkedIn user. I'm just using you as a metaphor for anybody in sales. What basically, what we're gonna do is we're gonna go to everybody, and we're gonna, ask you for a dance. And I'm I'm because because sales is a numbers game, and we go and ask it. We if we keep asking and asking and asking, someone will say yes. Yeah. And we feel at that point that what we're getting is an element of speed and velocity.

Alex Abbott [00:43:48]:

Probably not.

Tim Hughes [00:43:48]:

Because because be okay. Because the objection to what you're saying is that people will say, this will take too long. I don't have time for this.

Alex Abbott [00:43:57]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:43:59]:

So what happens around that?

Alex Abbott [00:44:01]:

It's ironic because the more you do, you know the the more you do the old way, you know, I'm gonna ask as many people to dance as possible. Yeah. You might get a few dances and hopefully they're good quality dances. But actually wouldn't it be better to take the time to build relationships with more people in the dance hall so that you can then pick and choose whoever you wanna dance with and they're more likely to dance with you because they know you. They know you're a good dancer to continue your analogy.

Tim Hughes [00:44:34]:

Yeah. That's it.

Bertrand Godillot [00:44:35]:

Yeah. Yeah. So so so

Adam Gray [00:44:39]:

okay.

Bertrand Godillot [00:44:40]:

You know, let's let's maybe, step back a little bit and say, okay. So this is so we have a current practice. And I and I love, by the way, the fact that you've got a a for for those listening to you on radio, Alex's background is a grain on a on a golf course. And I'd like to talk a little bit about changing your swing because this is what we're talking about here. So it's a, you know, you've got a traditional way of prospecting, which we all know is not well. And we and we tend to agree that this is not satisfactory, but at least, you know, it's where it's better than nothing. Yeah. What it produced, the outcome is better than nothing.

Bertrand Godillot [00:45:25]:

What we're saying is that there is a completely different way of doing things, which is much more successful. So in other words, there is a new swing that you could learn that would help you have a better game. Yeah. Now, obviously, when you start, when you start learning that new swing, it can get worse actually than before it gets better. So how do you how do you drive someone who's really an organization and and obviously a management team that is really willing to make that move, and help help them get there.

Tim Hughes [00:46:04]:

But but the better swing will get you down from a handicap of 25 down to single I'm really.

Adam Gray [00:46:11]:

I I don't I don't think this is about a better swing though, is it? Because I think that traditional sales is like trying to score a hole in 1. So I'm gonna phone people, and every very rarely, every now and again, someone will answer the phone and say, yes. I'll buy from you. And the problem with that is that it relies almost exclusively on luck. I'll hit the ball as hard as I can, and hopefully, it will go in the hole. And, actually, what you're doing is you're teaching people to drive, to chip, and to putt. And you know that if the the best golfers in the world are not necessarily the golfers that hit the most holes in one. They're the go golfers that understand how to drive and pitch and putt.

Alex Abbott [00:46:53]:

Yeah. And and the support, I mean, you can't I can't tell you how important it is that you've got you've got that support. The the people doing the work have that support. So, you know, greens are kept well. The clubs are clean. You know, the Caddy knows what he's talking about, what she's talking about. If we, again, carry on that golf analogy, but it it really is, you know, it's what I've realized actually quite quite relatively recently as I've sort of developed the conversation operating system. I purposefully call it that because it really is important for organizations who want to adopt this approach that so that it sticks and they can raise the bar across the organization.

Alex Abbott [00:47:41]:

They really need to be changing what they're measuring, looking at what systems they're using, what processes they're following. Even down to remuneration, how are you remunerating your people? Are you, you know, remunerating them based on, you know, revenue numbers that that don't really look at at driving the right behavior behaviors and holding people and leadership accountable for doing this. Because if you do all of that, this could be incredible for organizations. You know, when you think about the importance of that conversation and the one thing that most organizations are struggling with are getting those conversations with their audience so that they can influence them. You know, they can actually tell them talk to them about, the value that they will they will bring.

Tim Hughes [00:48:37]:

So what I'm hearing, Alex, is because the classic example of this, the the response to this is when we when we have bad pipeline, what we do is that we go out and we train people on medic or challenger or whatever the latest sales methodology is. Because what we do is that we talk to people how to close. But but what I'm hearing from you is actually what we need to be doing is teaching people how to actually start conversations.

Alex Abbott [00:49:03]:

Yeah. Start the conversation. Yes. But, you know, me and it can challenge it. You know, as you say, Tim, you know, it's it's it's all about improving the performance once you've had the conversation, once you have a qualified opportunity. Okay. Yeah. Some of them sort of, you know, start with, you know, creating insight to to educate and generate pipeline.

Alex Abbott [00:49:32]:

But as we know, buyers are ignoring that insight because it's everywhere. It's being thrown at them left, right, and center. So unless there is a degree of trust, then they'll ignore your insight. So what we're talking about here is developing trust, developing rapport and trust prior to the opportunity being generated. So you increase your chances of speaking with that person, but then you see it as a trusted adviser continuously throughout the process. So you're more likely to be more visible. You're less likely to be ghosted. You're more likely to engage with other stakeholders influencing the purchase decision.

Alex Abbott [00:50:17]:

Therefore, you're more likely to, you know, increase increase the chances of winning winning the business, reducing the sales cycle, and and also impacting the the average order value. So Alright.

Bertrand Godillot [00:50:35]:

Excellent. Well, I'm I'm I'm all in. Alex, listen. This has been, this has been really great. Where can we learn more? How can people get in touch with you?

Alex Abbott [00:50:48]:

LinkedIn is the best place to get in touch with me. I bet. Yeah. I think link full stop. LinkedIn. Search for Alex Abbott or the bearded sales guy.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:01]:

Okay. Excellent. Well, thanks for that. So we we now have a newsletter. Don't miss an episode. Get the show highlights, beyond the show insights and reminders of upcoming episodes. You can scan the scan the QR code on screen, or visit us at digital download. Live/newsletter.

Bertrand Godillot [00:51:31]:

On behalf of the panelists, to our guest, Alex, and to our audience, thank you all, and see you next time.

Tim Hughes [00:51:41]:

Bye, everybody. Bye. Thanks, Alex.

Alex Abbott [00:51:43]:

Bye. Cheers, guys.

Tim Hughes [00:51:44]:

Fascinating conversation. Thank you.

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