This week on The Digital Download, we are tackling a perennial business challenge: how to keep the pipeline full when everyone seems to be on vacation. With us to explore how to prospect effectively during the slow summer months are the show's own team of experts: Tim Hughes, CEO and Co-Founder of DLA Ignite; Adam Gray, Co-Founder of DLA Ignite ; and Bertrand Godillot, Managing Partner of Odysseus & Co and the producer of this show.

While many sales teams slow down in the summer, our panel argues this is the perfect time to shift your strategy from interruption to attraction. This episode will provide a practical guide to using the quiet period to build a foundation for a successful second half of the year by focusing on activities that create long-term value and trust.

Join us as we discuss questions like:

• Why are traditional prospecting methods like cold calling especially counter-productive in the summer?

• How can you create a "magnetic field" around your expertise that attracts clients, partners, and talent?

• What non-salesy activities should you focus on when key decision-makers are away from their desks?

• How do you use this time to build the authentic human connections that are now more crucial than ever?

As authors, strategists, and leaders in the field of social selling, our hosts have transformed how organizations approach business development. Tim has documented the 98% failure rate of traditional outreach; Adam architects the methodologies for building genuine rapport in a digital world ; and Bertrand’s entire philosophy is based on rethinking B2B acquisition by making outdated models obsolete.

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

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

Transcript of The Digital Download 2025-07-11

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:07]:

The Digital Download. Oops. Good afternoon, good morning and good day wherever you may be joining us from. Welcome to another edition of the Digital Download, the longest running weekly business Talk show on LinkedIn Live, now globally syndicated on tuning radio through IBGR, the number, the world number, number one business talk news and strategy radio network. Today we are tackling a perennial business challenge. How to keep the pipeline full when everyone seems to be on a vacation. Summary is here and it's here to stay. We are taking advantage of this time to discuss the fundamentals of authentic social selling with our panelists.

Bertrand Godillot [00:00:57]:

But before we begin, let's go quickly around the set and introduce everyone. While we're doing this, why don't you in the audience reach out to a friend, ping them and have them join us. We strive to make the digital download an interactive experience and audience participation is highly encouraged. Adam, would you like to kick us off?

Adam Gray [00:01:18]:

Hello, everybody. I'm Adam Gray. I'm co founder and of DLA Ignite and I'm his business partner. Yeah, this is a really interesting topic. I think that one of the challenges that, that everybody tends to face is that the summer period, like Christmas, we've got it in our minds that we can't achieve anything at all. And I guess part of what we're going to discuss today is, is that true? Can you actually achieve stuff during this period when everything seems to be running more slowly? So this should be a really interesting conversation, I think.

Bertrand Godillot [00:01:58]:

Thank you and we're looking forward to it. Tim, would you like to introduce yourself?

Tim Hughes [00:02:03]:

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

Bertrand Godillot [00:02:17]:

Okay, thank you. And myself, Bertrand Godillot. I am the founder and managing partner of Odysseus & Co, a very proud DLA Ignite partner. All right, so gentlemen, let's start with a foundational question. And you see it's going to be an easy one. Why are traditional prospecting methods like cold calling especially counterproductive in the summer? And that's, you know, maybe Adam.

Adam Gray [00:02:46]:

So I guess first of all, are they counterproductive in the summer? I would suggest that they're counterproductive at all times of year. But, but you know, the, the challenge presumably is that, and I say presumably because we as a business never do cold calling because it, we find it too depressing and ineffectual. And during the summer the problem is compounded. You know, it's hard Enough to get somebody at their desk when the office is full. Surely it must be impossible. The office is half empty. So I would have thought that all of those outreach methods are depressing at the best of times and potentially positively damaging at all times. And you know, we, we joke about how multi, multi threading, multi channel approaches to people just get you blocks on every channel rather than one.

Adam Gray [00:03:47]:

And during the summer more than ever, you know, people are simply not there in the numbers they are at other times, times of year. So it must be even more soul destroying a process to be in.

Tim Hughes [00:04:01]:

I, I'd agree. I mean I think we're in, you know, trying to get through to people. That is difficult enough. And Covid changed that because now a lot of people are not in the office. They're, they're working from home. And so you've got to call people on their mobiles. I don't know about you, but any number that's not in my address book, on my phone, I don't take. And, and so, and if it was important they'd leave a voicemail and no one ever does.

Tim Hughes [00:04:30]:

So I think trying to get through to people on the telephone is difficult. When I was a corporate, I'd get on average about 120 emails a day. And it was a difficult enough basically you would be drawn to certain people. You know, if you got an email from Mark Newton, my vp, I went to that. If I got something from someone I didn't know, I would just ignore it. When I went on holiday when I was in corporate, I would just put on my out of office and immediately get back and delete all the emails I had because if it was in important someone would email you back. They would have got the out of office. And the difference is though is that social media is always on and, and, and your, your buyers, your customers will be going on holiday with these.

Tim Hughes [00:05:13]:

Okay. Some people, you know, leave their iPads and phones at home, but it will be, you know, it'll be a minimal number and they'll be sitting on the beach or doing the tour of, of, of of Rome or whatever it is and at some point they'll be picking up their phone and you've got an ability to, to, to contact them and, and have a conversation with them. And you can do that at any time of the year, at any time of the day. A friend of mine, I know that she does, she does all her prospecting after she's put the, she's bathed the kids and put them to bed and she's got the time between she's putting the kids to bed and, and her, her goes to bed and that's her prospecting time. And so social selling provides you with a time 24 hours a day. You're not restricted to what in the old days was called prime selling time, pst. And you therefore you've got a massive competitive advantage to carry on prospecting even when everybody else is saying, I can't get through to anybody.

Bertrand Godillot [00:06:14]:

So the title of the show is Stop Prospecting, Start Attracting this Summer. So what is it that we do then?

Adam Gray [00:06:25]:

So I had a really interesting first meeting with somebody earlier today and they had initially had some interaction with Tim and Tim had said, you should probably speak to Adam. So I had a conversation with this person and you know, you do the normal rapport building stuff when you have a chat and you get to know each other. And he was a great guy and we got on really well and then we spoke about kind of how the businesses work. And I said to him about social and I basically walked him through how you need to be successful on social. You know, you need to have a great personal brand and you need to have a headline that encourages the person to read the about section and an about section that encourages people to read the rest of the profile. And then when you've got that nailed, you do these three things. You connect to them and then you, you engage with them and then ultimately you publish content that you hope that they engage with. And you, you at each interaction, you try to strike up a conversation with them.

Adam Gray [00:07:31]:

Now what was really funny was that I said, so you've got, and this, this person has got like six and a half thousand connections. I said, you got six and a half thousand connections? How many do you know? A couple of hundred people. And he said, yeah, probably. And the rest of them are just like padding. And I'm completely unaware of who these people are and what they do. I said, well, what you need to do is you need to identify how you become one of the 200. And the best way to do that is to engage with people. So you, you like and comment on their content.

Adam Gray [00:07:58]:

You draw them into some sort of interaction. And he said, yeah, that's exactly what Tim did. And I said, and it worked. Yeah. And he said, yeah. I said, you didn't feel sold to, did you? And he said, no, I didn't. And what happened was I actually reached out to Tim and said, maybe you can help me with this. I said, right, and that is exactly what your people can be doing in Their interactions.

Adam Gray [00:08:22]:

And the nice thing about it is that. And he said that he had connected to you. You had sent him a connection request a long, long time ago. Yep. Yeah. You know, like four years or whatever. Yes. And that you'd sent a follow up going, hi, you know, it's really great to be connected.

Adam Gray [00:08:39]:

You loved it. And he said, I didn't even bother responding to that.

Tim Hughes [00:08:42]:

No, he didn't.

Adam Gray [00:08:42]:

And, and he said, and then obviously he came back onto.

Tim Hughes [00:08:48]:

I commented on one of his posts.

Adam Gray [00:08:49]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:08:50]:

Engaged some who I was. He then looked at the message that I'd sent.

Adam Gray [00:08:54]:

Yeah, okay, this is a guy that I should be having a conversation with. And I think what's really interesting about that is that that's a great example of the, the slow burn. So you, you've been connected to him for four years. He had been engaging with or seeing potentially some of your content. Certainly you had established yourself as someone that was knowledgeable in his eyes. And then you started to engage with his content. And that was the catalyst for him to then reach out to you to say, I'd like to have a conversation, please. And I think what's so great about this is that that was a four year prospecting journey that was completely effortless for you to do, really.

Adam Gray [00:09:30]:

And he didn't feel that he was being pounced on and sold to. He didn't feel that he was being manipulated. He felt it was just a really comfortable way to get to know somebody. And I think what's really interesting about this is that so often salespeople, they do this kind of like cold calling or whatever it may be, and that catalyzes somebody to either buy now or never talk to them again. And I think that so often sales leaders particularly, they say, well, you need to focus on the buy now. But that's the really important bit. But we know from all of the research that 95% of people are not in market at the moment. So if you do 100 calls and you get somebody to the point where you've gotten by the lapels and you're giving them a good shake, five of them will buy and 95 of them won't.

Adam Gray [00:10:19]:

And the 95 that won't never talk to you again, that must be a fundamentally bad way to do things, mustn't it?

Tim Hughes [00:10:27]:

Yeah. What I would say is if anybody watching don't think that it takes four years to get a, to, to, to get a lead with, with social selling, it's one of those things that if you, you keep doing something then, then Things come back and, you know, I, and I get people coming to me at least once a week where I don't have to do any effort because of stuff that I've done in the past. And as you see, as, as we've been running the company now for nearly nine years, there's a, there's a lot of seed that I've thrown onto the ground which is basically is, is going to grow at some stage from a, a right near, right here, right now perspective. I was with a company yesterday and I was going, I was putting together a proposal this morning and a business case and the sales team are completely invisible to the modern bar. And they've got. Their profiles look like they're just other salespeople and they have very, very small networks and all they're doing from a content perspective because this new CRO has arrived is basically either reposting his stuff or reposting the corporate stuff because they're not being, they're not being empowered by either marketing or engagement in sales enablement or whoever to actually know how to create insightful content. So when you go to their LinkedIn profiles, you see nothing about. There's nothing.

Tim Hughes [00:11:58]:

I would look at and say, I trust you, you can help me. I have a business issue that maybe, you know, there's nothing about. They've just been organized into verticals. There's nothing in there on their profiles that shows that they have any vertical knowledge at all. So I will just scroll by and scrolling by is going on to the competition. Now, I happen to know that the competition is probably just as bad or just as worse, and that's probably the same as everybody else. But, you know, if going back to the, the, the theme of today, which is about prospecting, you know, so someone came to me the other day and they sent me a message and I just, I just ignored it. And the reason for that was that they just look like a salesperson.

Tim Hughes [00:12:41]:

They had a, they work for aws. So they had a big banner saying aws and their title was, you know, pretty much I sell AWS and I'm going to connect to you and then pitch to you. So I just ignored it. We then got into a conversation which was kind of interesting, which was, which was one of. She said, I'm big into social selling. I work for LinkedIn for four years and I sold Sales Navigator. I said, well, I said, that's interesting, but your profile doesn't show that you're into social selling. She said, it's all about people.

Tim Hughes [00:13:12]:

I said, not from your LinkedIn profile is, and it's all about your, your company and your, and I said the reason why I didn't connect to you was that you look like you're just about to pitch to me. Well, I went, oh, thank you for the feedback. It's like, well, no, that's not, not a problem. I'm always happy to give, give feedback, you know, and, and it was just interesting how someone's, someone was saying, I lived for social selling for four years because I worked at LinkedIn and it's all about the people, not about the brand. But she wasn't actually doing that. I said, you may think that, but why are you not doing that? So while I've got the floor, I'm going to go, I'm going to say that there's three things that you, you need to do. One is you need to have a, a, a profile that when you're prospecting, you prospect anybody and send them a connection request cold, they will look at your LinkedIn profile and you have the opportunity to make a first impression. And as the saying goes, you never get a second, a chance at making a first impression.

Tim Hughes [00:14:18]:

So you, what you need to do is show them all the things that a buyer would want to see, that you're interesting, that you understand their industry, that you understand the business issues, that you have a life out of work, that you're, you're able to tell your personal and professional story, that you're able to facilitate conversations because ultimately what they want to do is have a conversation and, and that you're able to establish authority. You know, when I was, when I was first started in sales, my sales leader said, you are the managing director of your territory. And in effect, your LinkedIn profile should show you're the managing director of your territory. It should show that you understand the latest things that are going on in there, that you understand the business issues that they're facing and all of that is available. It's like your mini website. It's up 24 hours a day, 366 days a year. And you've got that ability. So, you know, I'm not sitting there waiting for that person to come to me.

Tim Hughes [00:15:17]:

My profile is doing all the work for me. I'm out on the beach drinking pina coladas in the sun and they're looking at my LinkedIn profile and working.

Adam Gray [00:15:28]:

The.

Tim Hughes [00:15:28]:

Second thing, and this is, I saw this company, they're not connected to anybody. So you've got to be connected to the people that you're trying to Influence and trying to sell to search works differently on LinkedIn than it does to Google. What it does is that when someone searches on LinkedIn, it shows people that are concentric to your network, not necessarily the answer. We also know that from research that people search for brands and products. So all the people that are in market right now, 60% of the market, are currently on LinkedIn looking for your products. Therefore your salespeople should be being seen in those searches. They're being seen in those searches because they're connected to the people that are searching. They're being seen in those searches because they, they have keywords on their profiles.

Tim Hughes [00:16:26]:

They're being seen in those searches because they're talking about those things or doing what I did earlier on, which is go out and have the conversations themselves. And the third thing is what you need is a content, which I've kind of covered, which is content, not that it just says buy my product because we're great. Because everybody says that. You know, every single person that provides a payroll bureau or a payroll system or an HR system says exactly the same thing. Nobody can tell the difference between Oracle, SAP, Sage or any, any of the, the vendors. And they wouldn't expect to because they're not experts. You're the expert. They're not.

Tim Hughes [00:17:04]:

Therefore, what we're looking for is insight. Tell me something I don't know. Now I was told this on a sales training course 20 years ago, may even been 25 years ago, about being different and about turning up and actually turning up and knowing about the, the, the things that are going on in your industry. This isn't new, it's just that what we're doing is that we're doing it in the digital world.

Bertrand Godillot [00:17:30]:

That's really good, Tim, and thanks for. So the good news is we're going to go into each of these topics over the summer and deep dive.

Tim Hughes [00:17:41]:

My next door neighbor is cutting the hedge, so I'm going to have to go on Moon.

Adam Gray [00:17:46]:

Are they doing a good job?

Tim Hughes [00:17:49]:

I can't quite see.

Adam Gray [00:17:51]:

Right.

Bertrand Godillot [00:17:54]:

Okay, so, but, but maybe a bit of clarification for, for our audience when, when we talk about, you know, activating our presence, doing proper social selling, if I may call it this way. In the discussions I have the, you could say what, what seems to be best practice is, you know, we identify the key players into an account, we create lists, we download them and then we, we run a marketing sequence where we're going to do a few comments and then send a few emails and then send a few emails and Then ultimately, you know, potentially try to call, is this what we do to attract people? And that might be a question for you, Adam, because I'm sure you're gonna love it.

Adam Gray [00:18:46]:

Yeah, well, I think, I think first of all, the problem comes with viewing people in that way. I, I think that, that there's a really great analogy between how you behave when you're dating and how you behave when you're selling a complex, difficult, strategic purchase. And you know, in a dating scenario, you would not go into a bar and you'd say, okay, I want all of the people that are more than 5 foot 6 tall, can you come over here please? All the people that have got brown hair, you stand here, all the people that are in this age bracket, but you wouldn't do that because the people that would, that you potentially might be a good match with would find that fundamentally off putting about you. And yet, from a sales perspective, that's exactly what we do. We identify what our ICP is and then we try to process these people at scale, in bulk if you like. And always the story is around qualifying in or out going to qualify you out because you're not ready to buy yet. And, and this, these, even using these words is, is a real turn off to people. So if you think about Tim and the guy that I had the conversation earlier today that he connected with four years ago, in the process of connecting with this guy, he will have met loads of other people, some of whom he will have had meetings with, some of whom he will have, have had second, third meetings with, and some of whom will have bought.

Adam Gray [00:20:27]:

This guy, as it happened, didn't buy at that point, but he came back later and bought. So how you decide not to prioritize somebody is absolutely crucial in terms of the long term opinion they build about you. So some people are ready to buy immediately, which is great. Some people are not. And best practice needs to be redefining how we deal with prospects. And I always like to think it's much better to say, you know, if, if you are a good prospect for me, you know, you fit that, that, that criteria, that would make you a really good client for me, then this is not about qualifying in or out. This is about qualifying now or later. If I'm the right person to sell to you, you're going to buy immediately or you're going to buy at some point when you're out of contract, when you have budget, when this is the top of the list of problems you need.

Adam Gray [00:21:24]:

Whatever the, the, the reason you're not going to buy this very moment. So I need to make sure that I don't burn any bridges. And unfortunately, so much of the qualification process is about burning bridges. We prioritize the people that are going to buy today, not the people that might buy next week, next month, next year. So I think the best practice needs to be about building friendship with people. You know, if you've got 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 connections, you've got more than enough people to sell to for your entire career. And, and if you, and if you doubt that, it's like, how many connections have you got? I've got 700. Well, if they all phoned this week, you're in all sorts of trouble because you can't handle that kind of bandwidth.

Adam Gray [00:22:08]:

So you've probably got enough of the people, they may not be in the right place. So you may need to build your connections in the places you want. But if you've got a big network, you've got more than enough people in it, you need to make sure that those people know who you are and they respect you. And you don't do that by saying, you're going to buy from me, you're going to buy from me, you're going to buy from me. Because there comes a point when they say, I don't want to listen to that anymore.

Bertrand Godillot [00:22:29]:

So we love it, but we, we know that most sales leaders will actually set KPIs on calls. You know, how many calls did you, how many calls did you make this week? So I think maybe, and we can discuss whether it's the right thing to.

Adam Gray [00:22:47]:

Do.

Bertrand Godillot [00:22:50]:

Or it is the only thing to do. But over the summer, what could be a realistic KPI that you could set as a sales leader?

Adam Gray [00:23:01]:

Well, you could say within your target accounts, if These are the 10 companies that you need to sell to, and the people at this seniority and above are people that are actually going to write purchase orders for you. How many of those people are you connected to today? How many you're going to have connected to in a month's time, and then on the back of that, how many of those people have you had a messaging exchange with? So it's like the, the calling. You can either measure how many calls you've had, and by call I don't mean, hi, is that Bertrand? Yes. I work for Company X. And you put the phone down. That's not a copy.

Bertrand Godillot [00:23:37]:

Not the 3 minutes one.

Adam Gray [00:23:38]:

Yeah, yeah. A call is 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, an hour. So how many, how many calls have you had doesn't matter. How many meaningful calls you've had matters. It's like, how many messages have you sent? Well, that's irrelevant. How many messages you've got response to is what matters because they're the ones that are being read. So if, if we task people with connecting, growing their connections and therefore their influence in places that they want to be having conversations, how many of those first interactions, I. E.

Adam Gray [00:24:08]:

We're not connected to being connected. That's the first step. The next step is how many times have I sent a message to someone and they've responded? Then how many of those have we booked a call? How many calls have we had? And how many calls have a next action stroke follow up? And that could be patron saying, yes, I'd like to buy from you, can you send me a proposal, please? Or it might be patron saying, I'm not the right person. You need to speak to Tim. Okay, can you introduce me to Tim then, please?

Bertrand Godillot [00:24:36]:

So actually what you're saying is that the summary is the ideal period where you can have an initiative around this. Because what you just described, what you just described sounds to me like something you should be doing all year on. All year long.

Adam Gray [00:24:51]:

Sorry.

Bertrand Godillot [00:24:52]:

And not only during the summer, but potentially that's an opportunity.

Adam Gray [00:24:58]:

Yeah, it is.

Bertrand Godillot [00:24:59]:

To try something different.

Adam Gray [00:25:01]:

The thing about cold calling is that if I phone you, you have to pick up the phone at that moment, so you have to be sitting next to your phone at that moment, otherwise there isn't a cold call. If I send you an email or a connection request or some sort of message on a social network, then that can sit there indefinitely, which is a good thing. If I send you an email, the chances are it'll get lost underneath all of the other emails that you have, because we all get hundreds of emails and everybody's got 5,000 unread emails in their box, which every now and again they highlight all and mark as red. So they don't have a flag with a thousand on it anymore. You can't do that on social. So if you've got four unaccepted connection requests, then they show as unaccepted connection requests. And the only way is you can either cancel them, you know, decline them, or you can accept them. And if I've sent you four messages, every time you sort your, your mailbox in order and it says unread messages at the top, then my message shows up and the only way you can stop it from being an unread message is to read it.

Adam Gray [00:26:09]:

Now that, that Must be a positive thing, because I need to acknowledge that it's desperate for me today to speak to you, but it might be desperate for you today to do something else and not to speak to me. So I need to have a mechanism reach out to you where my action today can be responded to by you tomorrow or next week.

Bertrand Godillot [00:26:32]:

Right. Well, also, you know, as a matter of fact, the summer, the summer time is, is often, is often the time where you can step, well, you know, sit back and, and reflect on your, on your practices and potentially think about things that you could change.

Tim Hughes [00:26:55]:

So, so I want to ask, I want to ask Adam a question because he was in a meeting recently where, you know, this is about connecting with people. And the, the company that you were talking to had been advised when you connect to people on LinkedIn not to send a message. What do you think to that?

Adam Gray [00:27:26]:

Well, it was, it was really interesting. And, and I think this follows on. And I was going to make a comment about this at the time that you said about you were having the conversation with the person that worked at LinkedIn. So I was told by this company that their LinkedIn rep had told them that current thinking is that you don't send a note with your connection request. And further to something you said a moment ago, Tim, about you only get one chance to make a first impression. And the point is that if you have, if you're reaching out to somebody, you have an opportunity to say something to them when you send a connection request. Now, what you don't have to do is to spend 20 minutes reading their profile and picking out some unique things about them, but what you should be doing is sending a courteous, hi, I thought you looked really good. Is it all right if we connect or a note to that effect? Because ultimately that's the point here, isn't it?

Tim Hughes [00:28:32]:

Yes. And I think that the reason why people are, the reason why there seems to be this view that best practice is that you don't send a connection request. Is that what everybody is doing? Is that what they're doing is connecting and pitching? So what you do is that. And of course, connect and pitching has the likelihood people are going to accept your message. I've been told it could be anything down as like 6%. So it's a 94% rejection rate. I have heard people getting anything up to 13%. But again, what's that? An 87% rejection rate.

Adam Gray [00:29:17]:

And sounds like a failure to me.

Tim Hughes [00:29:19]:

Well, it is. I mean, if you, if you stood up at a board and said, guys and Girls, what we're going to do this year is we're going to go out to the market and have a 97% rejection rate of, on our business development. They'd say the door, out you go. And so, and, and so the, what they've been measuring is, or what they're measuring is, is people therefore accepting. So if, if you don't send a message and people will just go, well, you look at the LinkedIn profile, this is going to be a connection page. I know it. This is so darn boring. But okay, we'll see where it goes.

Tim Hughes [00:29:57]:

And you accept in admission, here's a list of my products and services. And, and you go, and why do I do that? And, and of course, because the, the, the acceptance rate of sending the, the, the, the, the, the note with your list of products and services is so small. Of course, if you take away your list of products and services and don't send, don't therefore send that note, it's higher if you don't send your list of products and services. And that is what the thinking behind it is. I've read the posts on, on LinkedIn. You go, oh God, you guys are in completely. Are you still selling like it was 40 years ago? Let's have a fax campaign.

Adam Gray [00:30:38]:

Yeah, I mean, I think that's the point, isn't it? If you, if you're not, if you're not taking a step back and looking at the data that you're measuring, the data can tell you something which is not necessarily the results as they are actually happening. And I think it's, it's really, it's really interesting, isn't it, that I find that when I'm coaching a group of people, there will be some people in the group that will really push back against this until such point as they've seen some success. And they were, oh, I see what's happening now. Because even if the number of people that accept the connection request, if you put a message with it doesn't increase the percentage, what happens is their opinion, opinion of you changes. So the number may, may remain the same, which the data may show that there's no benefit. However, the likelihood of those people to take a call with you or recognize you or engage with your content increases exponentially. We've got a. Hello, glad to see you here from Julia in, in the, the comments.

Adam Gray [00:31:42]:

And she'll be a prime example of this, somebody that is absolutely doing some.

Tim Hughes [00:31:45]:

You bring up Julia's comment.

Bertrand Godillot [00:31:47]:

Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah, sorry.

Adam Gray [00:31:50]:

Hi Julia, nice to see you. And she's someone that, that absolutely has got this down. You know, her, her social presence is extremely good and her interaction with people and content she posts is also extremely good.

Tim Hughes [00:32:04]:

So if you, if, if you're watching this, go and have a look at Julia's. You leave that up, Bertram, because her name isn't like Jones or Smith. People might need to. And if you, if you go and have a look at a profile, what you'll see is a. You'll start learning about Julia. You'll come away from it saying, I think I know you. And I think, and oh yeah, I think, you know, maybe we could, you know, maybe I think I could trust you. Maybe we could do business.

Tim Hughes [00:32:34]:

And that's the, that's the place where you want to be, surely.

Adam Gray [00:32:39]:

Yeah, I think what's, what's interesting is that this stuff is all. And again, I had a conversation with this this morning about this. This morning. All of this stuff is blindingly obvious. You know, it's so straightforward, but most people still don't do it. So, you know, you know, Tim, and, and you too, Bertrand, having taught this many times that there's no point during the kind of the pitch for this concept to people, here's how you need to behave in this environment. Nobody ever pushes back and says, I don't believe that's how you need to behave. Everybody understands this, everybody agrees with this.

Adam Gray [00:33:13]:

Salespeople better than anyone know how to be personable, build rapport, win trust, make friends. And yet somehow when they go into this digital medium, the desire to create something that goes viral and does your work for you seems to outweigh the fact that they know that behaving in this way will be a successful way to behave.

Bertrand Godillot [00:33:37]:

I'd like to bring the comment from Craig.

Tim Hughes [00:33:40]:

Yeah, Craig Depray.

Bertrand Godillot [00:33:42]:

So, and, and maybe, maybe, maybe Tim, you can, you can read it.

Tim Hughes [00:33:46]:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So I know Craig. We've known each other for 20. Is it 25 years, maybe? Craig a meaningful conversation. So he's talking about cold calling. Meaningful conversation is speaking directly with a person with the authority to tell them if they are in the market and if they're not, where, when they plan to next be in the market before Y2K. So I think I'm assuming he means the year 2000, I could achieve 20 of these per mandate.

Tim Hughes [00:34:15]:

And, and he could. Since COVID it's more like six to ten per man day. So there's been some, so there has to be some demand generation automation in place to compensate for the reduced Number of meaningful conversations.

Bertrand Godillot [00:34:30]:

So what do we think about this?

Adam Gray [00:34:33]:

If, if I'm perfectly honest, the, the first part of that, I can't argue with the, the next bid when they plan to be next in the market. See, if, if I received that call from somebody, I would find that frankly quite offensive. The reason being that I want you to help me. What I don't want is for you to sell to me. I know that selling is a byproduct of, of this conversation. So I would like you to share with me your Advice, your expertise. 28 years. Yeah, I want you to help me.

Adam Gray [00:35:16]:

I want you to share your expertise. I want you to put me on the right course. And there may be a, there may be a commercial interaction at some point down the road as a result of that, but the idea that, that you are happy to talk to me if I'm ready to buy and not if I'm not is, is, is feels like profiteering.

Tim Hughes [00:35:36]:

You know, I think it's interesting to see from, from Craig's, I mean, Craig is a good barometer and Craig is an outlier because I know he's actually a really, you know, very good cold caller. I mean, six to 10, you know, I've seen people post on LinkedIn, you know, SDRs who are saying they're getting one meeting a week. I mean, there's one company that we're talking to with a, where they have an STR team of five and they've not got one single meeting the whole of this year. And so, so, so I would say Craig is an outlier. But I think it's really interesting to see how, you know, when we say that the, the returns from cold calling are, are reducing. Craig's actually got some really good data that show that.

Adam Gray [00:36:20]:

Yeah. And I think what's interesting though is that I don't think that this is, I think the main driver for this is that most people in their normal day to day lives do not want to have a telephone conversation with somebody.

Tim Hughes [00:36:35]:

You know, and certainly people under the age of 35 don't use the telephone anyway. So.

Adam Gray [00:36:42]:

Yeah, and, and, and I think that, you know, the, the fact that we all want, what research was it that said about like 80% of people wanting a completely rep. Free experience? And I think that part of the challenge here is that that the telephone is a very, can be a very threatening environment for the, the person that's being sold to the seller. It's great because they can control what happens next, but for the buyer it can be an incredibly scary Experience being on the end of a sales call.

Tim Hughes [00:37:13]:

I mean, it's interesting, the comment about automation because I get, as, as I've said here before, I mean, if you send me a spam email, I just create a rule in, in, in mail so it always goes to the waste paper.

Adam Gray [00:37:27]:

You don't ever get one again then from.

Tim Hughes [00:37:28]:

I don't ever get one again. And, and the last time I looked, there's a over a thousand rules or something. And, but yes, the other day this week I actually got, because I tweeted it, actually got two emails from two different people with exactly the same titles with exactly the same content. And you just know, you know, this.

Adam Gray [00:37:49]:

Is just.

Tim Hughes [00:37:52]:

A prince in Nigeria trying to get rid of their money. You know, this is, this isn't, you know. And no. Yeah. Do people really buy from spam emails?

Adam Gray [00:38:00]:

But, but I think the interesting thing about, about the telephone is that I don't, I believe that cold calling has had its day, but I think the telephone is still an immeasurably powerful mechanism for having conversations with people. And I think that for many salespeople, they're scared of acknowledging that cold calling doesn't work because what they hear is that telephone doesn't work and telephone does. You know, if I've got the opportunity to have a call with somebody rather than send them a message on LinkedIn, I'll take the call every single time. The issue is the cold bit. So, you know, if you get a cold email from someone or a cold pitch from someone or a cold call from, it's the cold bit that's the issue, not the, the medium that it comes in.

Bertrand Godillot [00:38:50]:

Yeah, and, and clearly, I mean, based on experience, you, you can have longer conversations as well. So if you've done your job properly. So basically, as you said Tim earlier, you know, you've made the first good impression and then, you know, you have, you have established somehow your authority and credibility onto your, your topic, you're more likely to get a yes to a equal request for, you know, for, for having a proper conversation because you're already part of the, you already have built a relationship. And I think this is what we are saying is very different. And again, we're not saying we, we don't want, we don't want to talk to anyone. It's actually the exact opposite. We want to talk to as many people as we can, but maybe not in the same spirit. And that back to what Craig was saying is also the volume.

Bertrand Godillot [00:39:48]:

So, you know, how many nos do you get for a yes which is also I would say almost a, A, an historical or at least a traditional approach of volume so that you know you, you target a lot to have what you need. While we, I think our approach is different in the fact that we're not pitching our, our first level network, we are having discussion with the first level network to open the deliver to, to open their own network. And if, if I look at my own figures, I have a very small network of you know, 5000, maybe close to 6000 people but level two is, is more than, than 600 than an 80000 so I would be completely stupid to turn down my first level connection with a very straightforward fat fish and chips pitch.

Tim Hughes [00:40:57]:

So Butron, I did an analysis of a sales team today and there's a sales guy on plat sales team 35. He's got 371 connections and he posts every nine months.

Adam Gray [00:41:22]:

So. Yeah, so, so looking at Craig's last couple of comments it, it strikes me that we've had a, we're having a violent outbreak of agreement here, aren't we? He says yep. I make warmer calls and invest in intent data too. In 1993 I could generate 5, 5 A grade leads per hundred companies. Today if I work manually I'm lucky if I can have 150 calls to generate one a gray lead, a great lead. And yeah, I mean I, I think that we're seeing this in everything, aren't we dude? The research from Sixth Sense saying about how typically the buyer is 70% of the way through the journey before the seller even knows that they exist. In some instances they completely self serve and then they simply phone up to negotiate a price. And I think that part of the role of the seller these days and by the seller I mean the individual sales rep is to be out there establishing themselves as the go to person that can help and guide their audience to the place that the audience need to be to make an informed decision and buy with confidence about what it is they need to buy.

Adam Gray [00:42:29]:

And the only way that they can do that unless they, they've got you know, a whole section of a company website devoted to them and their, their ramblings. The only way they can do that is on their social presence.

Tim Hughes [00:42:41]:

Well there's two things that companies have to do now for, for sales and marketing, isn't there? Because AI has basically changed everything. So let's, let's take the human part of the buying process that people are still forming. So we know that as you said, buyers are self serving, they're Going on to social media. We know that from the data and they're making decisions about who they're going to shortlist. The buying process that the data shows from 6Sense is about 18 months. The selling process is three months or so from data. So we're, we're, we're in this situation where as, as sellers, we need to be in a situation where when those buyers are doing the research, we're the natural choice. Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:43:32]:

And the only way that we can be doing that is by having an interesting profile where people, again, you know what I've talked about already before, and, and being in the place where they're going to see us. So that's the, that's the, the human part of, of, of, of selling today. If you want to be successful today, that's what you do. The, the, the, the computer part is the AI part, which we now know because Forest is saying that 80, 85% of people are now using LLM. So what you'll do is you go into AI and say, I want a new buy a new payroll system. Give me a short list of five and give me the, and, and the LLM will go off and basically find information. So the shortlist is actually being created by AI and somebody else for people for. If, if you're watching this, then Lisa with a Z Adams is writing, writes a lot about AI and she's writing a lot about AI teammates.

Tim Hughes [00:44:32]:

But she wrote this week in a newsletter about AI and how the fact that your brand story isn't what you say on the website or what you say on the brochures anymore, because that re. It's, there's, it's this, you know, reality is perception. Your brand story is what the LM is basically saying about you. So you're in this, so, so you can create, you know, this company I'm talking to, they've got marketers that are creating brand branding stuff that fits the brand guidelines and is beautiful and stuff. And it's going that. But if it's not being picked up by the LLMs, I mean, websites now need to be built for LLMs, not for humans. It's not humans that look at websites. It's the, it's the AI.

Tim Hughes [00:45:17]:

And so we, we're, we're in this situation where to be successful today, we need to be making sure that marketing is helping sales create the, the content that's going to be picked up by the LLMs that's going to help us be in the situation that we're in. Those top five, if not Number one in the, when you react to the AI and ask for them to put the top five shortlist together and that is what modern sales and marketing is about. I should have said that in about 10 minutes time.

Adam Gray [00:45:52]:

Sorry.

Tim Hughes [00:45:55]:

That would have been a good statement to end the show on. But we got 10, we got nine minutes.

Adam Gray [00:46:00]:

Yeah, I mean it's interesting.

Tim Hughes [00:46:02]:

You agree with that.

Adam Gray [00:46:03]:

Well, Google now, it prioritizes, doesn't it, what it thinks is the answer. So previously you had gone to Google but you know that's the most used search engine. You've gone to Google for a series of results. Now you go for an answer to something and you know that AI generated answer at the top of the list is what Google's own AI. I think probably something more advanced than the Gemini that we get to play with is saying this is what I have interpreted your question as being. And I think what's really interesting is that that oftentimes if it's something that you already know the answer to, it validates the opinion that you, you've already had. And, and I think that you know, part of that and I guess that kind of keys in with the buying process, doesn't it? You know, when you create a short list of organizations that you're going to ask to tender for something in, in all probability you already know who you want to work with and you're putting that short list together in order that you have some credible people that you can play off your, your first choice against.

Tim Hughes [00:47:09]:

And that's what 6 Sense say that they reckon that you, the, the, the, the number one is actually chosen in the meetings before they contact the supplier.

Adam Gray [00:47:18]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:47:19]:

And they also talk about back, back channel, which is the back channel, which is where what you'll do is you'll say okay, we're going to shortlist Oracle SAP workday and you go, well you know somebody in workday, you go and talk to them, they don't talk to the salesperson, they talk to somebody in, in, in consulting or in development or something and say what, what's it like a workday and how's the product going and stuff like so, so there's this back channel thing that goes on as well. Which is why this isn't a sales and marketing thing. This is about empowering all of your employees to know about this and to be out there on social and, and talking and being credible.

Adam Gray [00:47:59]:

Yeah, I think what's really interesting is that when you were talking about that the first thing you said was about what it was like as a place to work and not whether or not it's a good product. And if you think about the effect that this statement would have, you know, if I work for Company X and you say we're thinking about buying Company X's, what's it, what's Company X like? And I say to you, the product is absolutely fantastic, but the people are awful. It's a dreadful place to work and really nasty backstabbing environment. You basically tear that up and stick it in the bin and look somewhere else. And I think what's really interesting is that often this, the emotive element of the purchase, even in a purely cerebral B2B environment, the emotive part of the purchase, we often underestimate and downplay how important that is in the decision making process. And if you ask someone on the inside, is this a nice place to work? No, it's not. I hate it and I can't wait to leave. Okay, where are you thinking of going? Maybe we'll have a conversation with them.

Tim Hughes [00:48:58]:

Because it, because I mean, I know that in, I mean, one, there's two things here, isn't it? Again, one is that in the world of sas, generally what you're doing is that you can be buying something at a very low price, which could even be a commodity. And what we'll do is we'll try it, we'll do it for a year, we don't like it, we throw it away. And a lot of SAS has become that. But in the world where I worked, which is selling finance accounting systems and supply chain systems and human resources systems and payroll systems, and Craig was also in the, the ERP market because we had a grand term for it there. I mean, and, and, and Craig makes an important point which is that in, in a lifespan of a, an accounting system, it can be 10 or 20 years. So when you're making a commitment to an organization, you're probably making that commitment and you probably won't be there when they replace it.

Bertrand Godillot [00:49:54]:

Yeah.

Tim Hughes [00:49:55]:

And so, and so it's a it, you know, you're, you're buying, it's not just a product, but you're buying into the culture of the company that you're, that you're, you're purchasing from. Yeah. And if, if someone says it's toxic here, you'll go, okay, we'll try someone else. But there again, maybe they're all toxic.

Bertrand Godillot [00:50:12]:

So gentlemen, back to our topic of the day.

Tim Hughes [00:50:16]:

Thanks for sharing us.

Adam Gray [00:50:18]:

Yeah, Keeping us.

Bertrand Godillot [00:50:19]:

What are the three things that I should be doing as a salesperson during the Summer to generate a magnetic field or attract people. The top three.

Adam Gray [00:50:31]:

Yeah, so. So assuming that you've got the. You've got a profile which turns people on rather than off, and that nowadays is table stakes, you need to be doing the three things that you should always be doing. You should be connecting to people, so growing the influence in the places that you want to have conversations. Second thing is, you should be engaging people. The fact that you've accepted my connection request doesn't mean that you know me from Adam. Boom, boom. And lastly, you need to be publishing content, and the content in itself in three parts.

Adam Gray [00:51:06]:

Content about what you do, because I need to understand your business and how it adds value to me. Content about what I do because everybody likes to hear about themselves. And lastly, content, perhaps most importantly, content about who you are, because that's the content that galvanizes people to engage with your content. So.

Tim Hughes [00:51:24]:

And what do you mean by that? So thinking of the seismic example. Yeah, he doesn't work anymore, which is why I've mentioned the company.

Adam Gray [00:51:36]:

Yeah, so. So this was a guy, and I've been having a number of conversations with him, and he was a very diligent poster. And he posted something every single day. And the majority of stuff that he posted was corporate content that he flipped onto his profile. And occasionally he would write something, but it would all be about the company. And he said, I keep growing my network, but I'm struggling to get anyone to engage with my content. And he had quite a big network, maybe three, four, five thousand people, and he was getting two or three likes per post. And I said to him, the problem is that it's all about what you do.

Adam Gray [00:52:12]:

And they know that because he was in a sales role, albeit a sales leadership role. And people knew that if they dropped a like on one of his posts, he'd be on the phone saying, tim, you like my post or something? You want to buy some of our product? And I said to him, you got anything fun that goes on in your family outside of work? And he said, yeah, my son is training to be a padi diver. He's only young, but he's already got his first certificate, so, well, why don't you do a post about that? So he did a post about his son, which got 200 likes in the first hour of being up. And he phoned me up saying, oh, my God, I can't believe that this has just happened. And what's interesting is that we, if anybody watch, watching this, looks at their own profile and they look at content about what they do versus content about who they are, the content about who they are always outperforms the other content. And anytime you do a photo of the view versus a photo of you in the view, the photo of you in the view will outperform the other one because it's about you and your network. The difficulty that this guy at Seismic found, the difficulty that everybody finds is believing the results of that data. So this guy, he did a post with 2 likes, 3 likes, 2 likes, no likes, 1 like 250 likes, 1 like.

Adam Gray [00:53:33]:

He went back to posting the other content again. Rather than saying, what I need to do is I need to insert this into the mix of stuff that I'm publishing. And everybody needs to recognize that, that the Internet was created for videos of cats playing with wool. You know, you can't just post that unless you run a pet shop, but you need to post that regularly if you want to maximize and galvanize your audience to take action.

Tim Hughes [00:53:59]:

And there's this. What I will say is that getting 250 likes is interesting, but because we're talking about prospecting in, in the summer, 250 likes is your ability, ability to prospect. 250 people have said I did it digitally recognize and, and, and like your, your picture. And one of the things that you need to be able to do is know how to harvest that, that engagement.

Adam Gray [00:54:30]:

Absolutely.

Bertrand Godillot [00:54:32]:

Okay, so my profile needs to talk about what, who I am and not what I'm doing. I need to expand my network, keep expanding my network into my target, by the way, target market and, and make sure my content is a mix of things that tell. Explain a little bit more who I am and, and, and a mix with things that talk about what I do. Am I correct?

Adam Gray [00:55:02]:

Absolutely right.

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:04]:

Excellence. Well, gentlemen, this has been great. As you know, we now have a newsletter. So if you don't want to miss an episode or the show inside, it's.

Tim Hughes [00:55:17]:

Going to blank across my face, isn't it?

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:18]:

Yes, it's going to.

Tim Hughes [00:55:19]:

Yeah.

Adam Gray [00:55:19]:

Perfect. That's better.

Bertrand Godillot [00:55:23]:

The show insights and reminders of upcoming episodes. Just flash, flash the QR code on screen or visit us at digitaldownload.live/newsletter. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Have a great weekend and we'll be back soon. Thank you.

Tim Hughes [00:55:39]:

Bye everybody.

#B2BSales #Prospecting #SalesStrategy #SocialSelling #DigitalSelling #SocialEnablement #LinkedInLive #Podcast