Phil Gerbyshak is a digital sales trainer, Chief Digital Officer at vengreso and fellow podcaster. On this episode of the Salesman Podcast, Phil gives us the framework to connect with anyone you could possibly imagine online. From your favourite celebrity to your hottest business prospect.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
Transcript
Will Barron:
Do you want to know how you can connect with virtually anyone from celebrities to the C-suite to high-level B2B decision makers? Then, keep watching because this episode is for you. Hello, Sales Nation, and welcome to today’s episode of The Salesman Podcast. On today’s show, we have Phil Gerbyshak. He’s a complete legend, and he is the Chief Digital Officer over at Vengreso. His course on social selling, on selling digitally is available over at digitalsellingbootcamp.com, so if you enjoy this episode as a lengthy probably want to head over to. And on today’s show, we’re diving into the process, step by step, of uncovering the least friction platform to engage with someone, how to essentially get mentoring from them, ask great questions to them and how you can turn that into a business conversation. And so with all that said, let’s jump straight in. Phil, welcome to The Salesman Podcast.
Phil Gerbyshak:
Hey. What’s up, Will? So great to be here, man. I love your show.
Why Connecting With Buyers Is Now Harder That It Ever Was · [01:00]
Will Barron:
I appreciate that. That’s a nice kind of intro and I appreciate you, you tuning in. And Phil, on today’s show, we’re going to dive into connecting with virtually anyone. And this is kind of a big claim and a bold claim, and I think we’re going go deep in this one. I don’t want the audience to think this is an easy process, but I think it is more doable than ever. But in the internet age with barriers being broken down, with gatekeepers not being there, with multiple platforms to communicate with, the decision makers, the influencers, the C-suite that we as B2B sales professionals are trying to get in front of, right now in 2017, is the trend of it being easier to get in front of these people, is that continuing or is that perhaps shifting or maybe even getting harder as we move forward in 2017 into 2018?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Well, I think it will continue to get hard. It has to because right now it is relatively easy. And I said relatively, it’s easier than it used to be. Used to be, you’d have 10 layers to get through. They wouldn’t answer their own phone. They didn’t answer their own email. But now, with smartphones, with social media, it is a lot easier and it isn’t just about getting their information, right? It isn’t just about, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got their email address. Oh, I’ve bought a list.” That doesn’t matter. Now, you really have to work hard and be honest and genuine about your connection needs and why you’re hoping to help them.
Will Barron:
So let me ask you another question on the back of that of do we need to go deep with each of these connections and spend a lot of time actually building relationship, and obviously, there’s massively leading question here, or are we spamming the heck out of the top 50 CEOs that we’re trying to sell to until one of them just breaks and gives us some kind of reply?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Well, I think you definitely led me there, and the answer is we do want to go deep. We do want to be genuine. We do want to develop a real connection. It’s not about, “Hey, look, I shared one of your messages. So yes, let’s connect on LinkedIn. And yes, now we can do business together.” That’s not how it works. You have to build a real relationship. You have to go deep. It is not enough just to connect on LinkedIn or just to follow them on Twitter. It’s never enough to just do anything.
The First Step to Building a Connection With a Potential Buyer · [03:11]
Will Barron:
And tell me if I’m wrong here because I might be going mental, and I really appreciate my audience. I probably appreciate my audience connecting with me on LinkedIn more than a B2B decision maker appreciates a salesperson, trying to connect with them on LinkedIn and share their content because clearly my business is based on the number of eyeballs that we get on the show. So when the audience shares it, they’re doing me a favour. They’re saving me kind of paid advertising costs, and it means a lot. So I think I’m safe in saying that I appreciate that more than a CEO who has 20 connections a day from people trying to sell him stuff that he may or may not value.
Will Barron:
Now, with that said, someone adds me on LinkedIn. I kind of click okay and that’s it, I don’t really… Unless they engage in a conversation with me, I don’t typically email them. So is there any value in just connecting with someone on LinkedIn, and because what we want to build up here eventually, Phil, hopefully, is a framework of what we should be doing when we should be doing it, and maybe even who we should be doing it with. Is just sending a random connection request and then sending a message after the fact, is that the starting point of this process or do we need to get their attention and have them know, like and trust us before we even send that connection in the first place?
“Just because they said yes to your connection request doesn’t mean yes to business. It’s yes to the next step, yes to that next piece of the conversation.” – Phil Gerbyshak · [04:40]
Phil Gerbyshak:
Well, I don’t think you have to do it before you send that connection. I don’t think that we have to go deep and then connect. I mean, a lot of times if you add a little bit of value, people will connect. It doesn’t mean though that they know, like and trust you. We have to be honest there. Just because they said yes doesn’t mean yes to business, it’s yes to the next step, that next piece of the conversation. Just like if they follow you on Twitter or you follow them, you can ignore every single message that anybody sends. You still have to add value. You cannot just crank up the volume, be obnoxious, and expect that people are going to care.
Will Barron:
I think you just told something brilliant here, and this might change the paradigm. This might immediately change how I thought about the whole conversation that we’re going to have, and these questions are just coming out the window of, should we be aiming then to have the next step in the conversation to the point where the business just happens versus what I feel like we’re doing? And maybe this is somewhat selfish and maybe it’s needed, I don’t know, to be successful in sales, but I feel like rather than just aiming for that next bit conversation, which builds that know, like and trust, we’re aiming for the zero sum game of closing the deal and everything else doesn’t really matter, this just one point is what we’re heading towards. Is that almost a counterintuitive way of looking at it and that if we just look for the next conversation point, the business will happen as opposed to kind of trying to reverse engineer this one moment where we heroically ask for the business and it comes in?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Yeah. Well, there are no heroes anymore. In social selling, the heroic part is the people that don’t spam. The heroic part is the people that continue to add value that do make that conversational next step that are willing to just converse with no ulterior motive because, frankly, I am just as happy if I get some information that I didn’t have about you, Will, than if I was able to close that business. And I say that not because I don’t like closing business because, of course, I have to eat too. But what I mean is if I get that next bit of information from you, that thing that’s going to open up so that, now, when I talk to 10 CEOs, now… Oh, okay, now, I have something of value to add to them. And now, when I have a conversation with the next one, I can say, “You know what? I was talking with another CEO, and this is what they said. This is what they shared.” So it’s no longer just about me or my marketing team, now it’s about them and their peers and it changes the conversation drastically.
Want to Connect with a Powerful Decision Maker? Here’s How to Get In Front of Them · [07:03]
Will Barron:
Perfect. Okay, so let’s build a bit of almost a case study or a real life example on this. Say, I am selling some kind of SaaS software product, and I want to get in front of a director of finance or kind of a CFO equivalent in the states over there, what is the first step for this? And tell me if I’m wrong here and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but just to carry now in the conversation and keep it moving forward. Is it to sort out what platforms that actually on and using, and then is that the starting point of this? Or should we always go email first, for example?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Well, I think you should go in whatever way you can, whatever way it has the least amount of friction. I mean, the goal is to work as less hard as you can in the beginning, so you can work more hard at the back end. So if you notice that they’re active on LinkedIn, that they’re active on Twitter, they’re active on Facebook, active on Instagram, wherever they’re active, that should be your starting point. And your goal is to create conversation, not to gather email addresses because I’ve got plenty of email address in my CRM. Heck, I can buy an email address. That is not where it’s at, right? That’s where the connection on LinkedIn might start. Oh, yay. Now, I get their personal information. And that’s great, but I should connect where they are most often where they’re active, even if they’re not posting. I should be looking for things that are interesting, and then I should be working that so that I can move that closer to a conversation.
The Best Social Site to Connect With Your Prospects · [08:27]
Will Barron:
And again, to get too practical about this, Phil, are we looking for… When you say perhaps they aren’t posting, but they’re active, is there any triggers? Is there anything that we should be looking out for on the social profiles? Is there anything that we should be, and kind of right from this question, do we value the interactions on LinkedIn more than the interactions on Instagram because perhaps it’s more appropriate to have a conversation on LinkedIn? How do we quantify all these potential numbers and data points so that we know where are the best… I’m hesitating as I use this phrase, but the best kind of location to attack is.
Phil Gerbyshak:
The best location to connect, again, is LinkedIn and Sales Navigator shows you who’s been active. You can go in there, see if they’re active. If they’re active there, if you see that they’re commenting, if they’re liking, if they’re sharing, if they’re doing things, interact with them there. If you notice that their company is doing something that relates directly to their job, if it’s a CFO, and they just announced that they got $50 million in funding, well, now is an opportunity for you to have a conversation with them about, “So what are you doing with that? How did you get that?” Asking genuine questions, not being a sneaky salesperson but asking that.
Phil Gerbyshak:
And then we look on Twitter. Again, if they’re sharing content or they’re at least interacting with it, look at what they’re liking, look at what they’re retweeting, look at even who they’re following because those people, even if they’re not actually clicking like, they’re still influencing their brain. Okay, so maybe you interact with some of them so that you can say, “Well, I see you follow Harvard Business Review. I was just having a conversation with Adam over at the Harvard Business Review about such and such a thing.” This is where a conversation really helps you get to the point where you can actually connect because you’re like, “Oh, really? You had a conversation with someone that I’m already influenced by, thereby you are an influencer.” That’s typically how it works.
Phil Gerbyshak:
And it’s not that one is more or better or worse, it’s which one is going to work. And it’s hard to tell. I mean, the signal is really very faint. You have to really be paying attention, but that’s where you have to pair down your list of people that you’re listening to. Sales Navigator helps that, Twitter List. On Instagram, setting up notifications on the right people that you want to target. On Facebook, you could… A lot of people have it set up so you can follow them even more than you can friend them, or at least you can check out their profile because most people, they’re somewhat public in their use of Facebook, not completely maybe like I am, but at least somewhat, so maybe you have a friend of a friend. Well, okay, now we might have a pathway in.
Hit and Run Networking Doesn’t Work Anymore · [11:08]
Will Barron:
So I had this somewhat… And this is brilliant because I think you’ve just done 15 levels deeper than previous guests we’ve had on the show, which is fantastic, and as you described this, Phil, I had a similar experience recently with no one was telling me anything. It was just one of the audience members perhaps trying to get my attention or get in my good books. So perhaps tell me something further down the line, but he dropped me an email saying, “Hey, I listened to this episode of The Tim Ferriss podcast. These are the kind of the points I took away from it, and I see that you enjoyed the episode as well.” My mind was this point was like, “How the heck do they know that I’d listened to that episode of the show?”
Will Barron:
So I asked him, and he came back with that Tim Ferriss on LinkedIn had made a post saying, “What guests would you like to see on The Tim Ferriss Show moving forward?” One of my audience members had linked one of my previous guests and said, “Really enjoyed this episode of The Salesman Podcast with this guest,” and then there was a conversation underneath it and I put, “Yeah, really enjoyed his episode on X, Y, Z, and he’d already been on The Tim Ferriss Show, just inadvertently.” So I said, “I really enjoyed that episode of him on The Tim Ferriss Show, which is where I discovered him, add him on my show.”
Will Barron:
So I realise I’m kind of going convoluted with this tale, but someone in the audience had gone through, seen these posts that I’d made, not engaged on LinkedIn and kind of got in that conversation, but then taking it to email with that information, whether they’d already listened to the show, like they said they had, or whether they listened to have the contents to be able to drop me an email. But either way, they listened to the show, they pull out some bullet points and they were good reminders for me of what I wanted to take away from the show. And it was a good interest in email, full of insights of stuff that I’d already heard, but perhaps hearing it a second time, I can put it into practise, and that was a valuable email to me that didn’t cost anything.
Will Barron:
Perhaps took a little bit of kind of blood hounding and following the trail to work out an angle that was not totally obvious to me so much so that to ask him why I did it because it… How to describe it? It wasn’t shock, but I was set back by the effort that he’d put into it, and someone showed that I’m talking about it on the podcast now. And he’s going to listen to this and drop me in every email saying, “Why didn’t you mention my name and why don’t you remember me?” And so I’m going to be embarrassed about that, but is this what we should be doing of going that level deeper than just liking a post or retweeting something and then expecting to have something back from that individual? Because it’s almost value sucking at that point just to share something and have expectations, right?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Yeah, absolutely. That hit and run networking that we used to be able to do, people used to be surprised when other people on Twitter, “Really, you use Twitter, Will? Holy cow.” Well, that’s not the case anymore. Wow, you’re on LinkedIn. Well, no kidding, so is everybody else. Microsoft bought him for $26 billion in 2016. I mean, this is not a surprise that people are on LinkedIn, so absolutely, go deeper, add more than the surface value. I mean, most of the time when I teach this, Will, what happens is people make the easy out. They see the most recent thing that someone did and they use that for content. Well, everybody’s doing that. Hey, wish somebody congratulations on their anniversary. LinkedIn has that as a trigger. Well, it’s so bad now that people are asking, “How can I make sure that I never get another anniversary note?”
Phil Gerbyshak:
Well, seriously, instead I want you to go deeper, instead look at that. Seven years ago, here’s how your business was. Seven years forward, now here’s how it is. What’s changed and what insights have you learned, Will, as a result of having The Salesman Podcast? Now, what number are yet like 130, 150, 500? I mean, come on, right? How much have you learned in the last three months, three years, 300 years that now you can share. And that would be something because, again, a senior executive, not that they necessarily want to directly mentor people that send them an email, but of course, they want to share some insights. Of course, if you give them an insight, now they feel like they should give you an insight back. And if you ask a genuine earnest question, they’re going to answer you in a genuine earnest way. But if they can tell that it’s a leading question to figure out, right? If you’re leading with the solution, well, now it’s like, “Go away. You suck,” right? That doesn’t play.
How to Effectively Engage with Prospects on Social Media and Make a Lasting Impression · [15:33]
Will Barron:
So you’ve kind of wrapped it up there, but I feel that’s worth digging in deeper here, Phil, of I was going to ask you whether we should lead with an insight and kind of hope that we get a response or whether we should be asking questions because I’ve found personally that when you’re dealing with these higher-level decision makers, it’s not everyone, but sometimes there’s ego involved, perhaps they’re an extrovert. There’s certain stereotypes that do… Stereotypes are typically somewhat true for a reason, rightly or wrongly. So I find when I ask questions like this to individuals that I’m trying to mentor and perhaps a strong word, but people trying to get on the coattails off people and trying to get under their wing a little bit just because they’re a good relationship to have in the future, not necessarily because I’m trying to sell them anything.
Will Barron:
I find that they do want to respond. They do want to give me insights. And how far do we go with this? And have you got any examples perhaps of questions that we should be asking perhaps a CFO. I know it’s context dependent, but just to give the audience to just make it real for them. What kind of questions should we be asking a CFO of, I don’t know. A CFO of a company that makes a SaaS marketing tool. What kind of questions should we be asking them to engage in that conversation and start building this know, like and trust?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Sure. Well, let me back that up first to should you offer an insight or ask a question, and my answer is you should be prepared to do both, okay? You should always be prepared to do both. You should have an insight and you should have a question because if they respond to the insight, then that’s great. Then you don’t necessarily have to ask a question that way, now you can ask it when we’re having a conversation. At the same time, if they respond with your question then great, then maybe you don’t need an insight. But so some of the questions you could ask are, so what’s different now that you’re a $50 million company than when you’re a $20 million company? What’s the biggest surprise in raising money?
“Your goal during that initial connection is not to close them, but to get closer to the conversation.” – Phil Gerbyshak · [18:16]
Phil Gerbyshak:
SaaS software, their whole goal is probably to get more perpetual revenue. Okay, well, how… They all know that marketing and sales should be aligned. You hear that over and over again. We focus on that at Vengreso a lot. Align marketing and sales. Well, you might want to ask. So as the CFO, how are you making sure that marketing and sales are aligned so that they can have a budget that makes sense together? That might be a question you might ask. You might see that their biggest competitor just got funded and they didn’t. Are they thinking about it, right? You could ask that question a lot of times. They might say, “Well, you know I can’t tell you that.” Well, that’s okay because they responded. Your goal again is not to close them, but just to get closer to the conversation. So you can be a little bit friendlier, so asking those questions.
“To connect to virtually anybody, you have to over prepare for the conversation because, frankly, you don’t know which question or insight is going to hit.” – Phil Gerbyshak · [19:04]
Phil Gerbyshak:
The other things that you can ask if you went to the same school, you can ask a question about the school. Do they have some particularly goofy professor? Especially we know at college, a lot of professors have been there a long time. If we’re close in age, it makes some sense, right? Is there a special place? Do they still go back for the homecoming game? Most alums do. So just ask some question, doesn’t always have to be value driven, but prepare an insight, prepare a question about business, prepare a couple personal questions and see what works. It’s not going to be one message. This is no silver bullet here, folks. To connect to virtually anybody, you have to over prepare for the conversation because, frankly, you don’t know which one’s going to hit.
Phil Gerbyshak:
I can’t promise you that question seven is the right question for you. What I can promise you is that if you’re persistent, if you don’t give up, if you offer value, then they will see you as a person of value, and it takes time. These relationships, it’s not a surprise anymore. Nobody is in a competition list society anymore. Everybody has competition. So what’s the competition doing? Maybe that’s the insight, “Hey, did you know…” If I was going to pitch you, Will, “Hey, do you see that this podcast is doing that, might you think of this?” Or again, if I’m going to the CFO, “Hey, I notice that this CFO at this company is doing X. You might want to try Y. Here’s some thoughts,” but again, that’s depth, that’s not surface level.
Will Barron:
For sure. So I used to do this medical device sales of surgeons would use products in certain ways, perhaps we would describe them as off-label. So we would bring surgeons from one trust in the UK to another trust to give them an unofficial guide of how to… Perhaps they can use these, and this is how medical equipment is developed over the years of one surgeon will do this a different way. He’ll use something upside down or she’ll use something upside down. And then the manufacturer creates the product to allow them to do that, and that’s how you kind of get breakthroughs.
Will Barron:
So I would drag my favourite surgeons around, they would get a huge ego stroke out of it. The one in particular over here in Bradford is absolute legend, but he loved just… He didn’t even love teaching. He just loved being right and making men kind of… Because they’re all 40, 50, 60 other consultants, he liked overgrown ass men looking up to him from the different procedures and the way he would do things. So I used to drag him around all around Yorkshire and take him to different places to do exactly that. There was nothing to do with me. I wasn’t clever, there was no insights. There was none in my knowledge going in this.
What to Do When a Prospect Just Doesn’t Reply · [21:17]
Will Barron:
It was just having access to this individual who liked having his egos stroked and he was making a name himself and I was helping indirectly, I guess, grow his personal brand. So there’s lots of angles for all of this. But Phil, before we get into what the perhaps step three is, if step one is sussing out where people are, step two is having a conversation started with them, before we get into step three, what happens when they don’t reply to our incredibly insightful comments or kind of questions and shares and engagement? What happens when we just get ignored?
Phil Gerbyshak:
That happens a lot, it’s not surprising. So now, okay, how else can you get connected? So who does that person know that might be able to make an introduction for you? How can you ride on the coattails of somebody who already has influence over them, right? Maybe it is your favourite author, maybe you can get an autographed copy of the next book from someone. I can tell you, I send out tonnes of books. I’m fortunate that I know a lot of authors, so I’m going to get autographed copies of their books, and I might send them out. Say, “Hey, you know what? Here’s the latest book by so-and-so thought leader. I bet you don’t have a copy of it. I’d love to talk to you about this book,” or, “Hey, you could even do a quick interview with them. You could do little three questions with pick an author.”
“People will ask, should all salespeople blog? Maybe, but all salespeople should ask questions” – Phil Gerbyskak · [22:36]
Phil Gerbyshak:
And now, it’s on your LinkedIn profile, maybe it’s on your blog, right? People will ask, should all salespeople blog? Well, all salespeople should ask questions. So ask questions, use that as the basis. Again, show your path in through another person, kind of go around the corner, and then ride that in. And if they continue, remember they’re getting inundated with messages. They’re getting inundated with messages. So don’t be afraid to pick up the telephone, call people, don’t be afraid to do that. Know that some executives still actually do answer their phone, but you still have to be just as interesting, just as interested, just as engaging, and you have to try again because there is no magic bullet, right?
Phil Gerbyshak:
To connect to virtually anyone, Will, you have to be persistent, and you can’t give up because who knows, right? They might not have seen them, maybe on their LinkedIn profile, maybe it’s an old Gmail address that they haven’t checked in three years. Okay. Well, I get tonnes of people who send me email through my Facebook to connect. Guess what? My Facebook has an old Gmail address, that the only thing I use it for is social media notifications. So once a week I go through and I just delete everything that’s in there. Well, if that’s your path in and you’re not actually connecting with me on Facebook, I never saw your message.
Will Barron:
I love this idea of the authors and books because there’s plenty of business authors that are… Well, I know from doing the show and interviewing. The way more accessible, even with million copies sold than what you think… From kind of outside looking again of when I first start the podcast than what I thought they would be, and a lot of business authors… I don’t really read fiction, so it might be similar there. But with the nonfiction authors, they typically allow you to buy a book through their website, and for a little bit more, they’ll sign it, and they’ll send it to you.
Will Barron:
So you could not have a relationship, customise that again, send to you forward it on, and perhaps you don’t want to kind of lie that you are best friends with the author perhaps, but it could be a nice little treat for someone, and I have… People come to the show and when they’ve got books, they’ll send me a copy of their book after the fact, if I’ve not read it before, they’ll be nice little note in there. Stephen Covey Jr. sent me his book recently and he’d put some little notes inside it and he probably puts the same notes in all of them that goes out, which probably was Sunday afternoon kind of activity, kind of an hour’s worth of books and putting on the same posted notes, same notes, but that felt like he made a real big effort for me.
How to Break Through the Noise and Create New Sales Conversations · [25:13]
Will Barron:
So again, taking a book signed or not, and just putting a few kind of post-it notes in there of, “I think you’d really like this. I know you’re a busy person, you might not be able to read the whole thing.” It’s the goal of all this taking social media out the equation for a second, and I know that’s kind of hot button and kind of a focus, a topic for yourself, Phil, but get rid of social media, pretend that doesn’t exist, is this all just about being different and breaking through the noise? Are we over complicating it perhaps and making it more complex than where it needs to be?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Of course, we are. We’re human beings. We always overcomplicate things, but yeah, it’s all about being different, Will. It’s all about breaking through the noise. It’s all about not doing what other people do. One of my strategies is about connection, starting with happy birthday. Well, most people, if they see it on Facebook, they might write HBD. Will, that’s no big deal. Who cares, right? So go from there. Okay, maybe they post on their wall. Maybe they send them a private message, maybe they post on their own wall and tag them, maybe they see it on LinkedIn, but instead I want to encourage you, pick up the telephone and call them. Every day I make phone calls to wish people a happy birthday with no ulterior motive, no ulterior motive at all, just, “Hey, Will, it’s your birthday today. Happy birthday. Hope it’s a great one. Doing anything special?”
Phil Gerbyshak:
Most conversations are 30 seconds or less. While in that 30 seconds, that person knows that I care about them. They know that I recognise their birthday. And often I’m the only person who called them on their birthday besides maybe their mom. Well, now, when I might call on them, two weeks, two months, two years later for business, now we have a relationship and they remember. I can tell you I called someone last Friday. I wished him a happy birthday. I’ve been wishing this person a happy birthday for 11 years. They called me apologising that they missed my call and how forward they were looking forward to talking to me on their birthday because they knew I would call. Well, think about that. Now, instead of just being a burden, now they’re actually looking forward to my call. So when I do call back, even if they’re in the middle of something, they might take my call. That’s pretty cool. That’s where we want to go. That’s different, that’s value add, and that is a relationship that will earn you money.
Will Barron:
Just provide me, Phil, of this may not be appropriate for all of the audience as a potential opportunity to break the ice here with a new potential customer, but I did this once for a surgeon. So fiverr.com, you pay $5 or sometimes it’s $10, whatever it is, and you can get people to do stuff for you. So one of the things, I had a surgeon, he’s Welsh, really proud, strong Welsh bloke from a man’s man, for his birthday… This is surgeon when I was in medical device sales. I sent him, for $5, you can get a Welsh person to sing happy birthday in Welsh. And he names the person and says… There’s a bit of an intro before he sings, but he’s wearing a thong. So I paid for this, sent it to this surgeon, and he’s a rugby lad, kind of big, broad shouldered, kind of… I had a decent relationship with him, so I know he’d find it funny.
Will Barron:
I walk into theatres that afternoon after sending him in the morning, considering he knows it cost me $5, what’s that? Four pounds or something like that, absolutely nothing. And all the theatre staff sat around his computer, probably 20 of them, all watching it on loop in hysterics, and he loved it. And obviously, he shared it with everyone else in the theatre, in the operating room. And that I became then the rep that sends these hilarious videos and I only sent one of them and I had all these other surgeons telling me their birth dates because they wanted something similar when it came across to them. I don’t think I’ve told that tale on the podcast before, and it worked wonders. It’s so simple and there’s obviously an element of risk to it. You’ve got to push your boundaries. And I think it’s almost a perceived risk of not looking professional, but if you know the right person, if you’ve got a reasonable…
The Goal of Every LinkedIn Connection is To Book a Meeting · [29:12]
Will Barron:
The risk was almost that he was going to accept it. But if he showed it to anyone else, it would make me look unprofessional. And I just don’t think that’s the case, I think we’ve got a lot more leeway with these kind of things than what we feel we have. And this probably goes down to asking questions, asking tough questions, asking controversial questions, and I guess this breaks through the noise. So we’ve all that said, Phil, final step to this, and I’m conscious of time here. So this is probably a whole podcast on itself, but we’ve got to reply. Perhaps in the reply, they’ve referenced us. So perhaps they’ve been on our LinkedIn profile, they know a little bit about who we are. And again, another kind of loaded question here, and I know you’re going to go over it, how do we transfer that from a conversation to a business conversation/sale, further down the line? How do we progress from “great, they’ve answered a question”, kind of like whoopee to we’ve closed 50 million in business with them?
“If you’re a B2B salesperson where your sales are complicated and there’s multiple decision makers, if you can get one champion who can bring you in and show everybody how cool you are, well, now when you do go in, you don’t have to spend a thousand dollars on donuts. Now, you can actually go in and people are looking forward to seeing you.” – Phil Gerbyshak · [20:35]
Phil Gerbyshak:
Yeah. Well, it’s about the next step. So what is the next step? It should be getting them off of social media and getting them on the phone, getting a meeting in person, could be getting a Zoom meeting, a Skype meeting, get somehow a face-to-face and learn more, gather enough information so that you can be super valuable, super specific and super customised. Now, I hear what people are thinking. They’re like, “Oh, my gosh. Dude, that takes so much time. That’s so hard.” Well, yeah, it is hard. And yeah, it does take time, but it’s worth it if you are working on bigger things, if you’re not going after that $500 sale, if you’re going after something larger. If you’re a B2B salesperson where your sales are complicated and there’s multiple decision makers, if you can get one champion who can bring you in and show everybody how cool you are, well, now when you do go in, you don’t have to spend a thousand dollars on donuts, right?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Now, you can actually go in and people are looking forward to seeing you. Holy cow, I mean, last year, I got a thank you note from someone that I went and visited with a gift card, thanking me for my time for doing a sales call. How does that happen? Well, I added tonnes of value in the conversation, right? This was a customer of mine that I poured value into, and they gave me a gift card. Well, it’s all about value, folks. If you can add some value to people’s lives over and over again and take it offline, take it off of social and make it really hyper personal, now you have more of their attention, and a lot of times they’ll give you their cell number. They’ll take your text. They’ll enjoy videos from you. They’ll let you come in and visit them. They’ll take a phone call. They’ll add you to their cell phone, not to ignore you, but to actually pay attention to.
Phil Gerbyshak:
That’s the next step, that’s how you take it closer, and then you have all the information you need to determine, am I the best fit? Is my product or service the best fit? Or is it somebody else? And then you have to be willing to refer that away because sometimes it isn’t you, and then that makes you even more trusted. But you close the business because the relationship makes sense, because there’s enough value exchanged that this is going to happen. You can’t force people. You have to understand what their cycle is, right? When do they get funding? Who funds? How much do they have? Is this really a need? What’s the priority? I mean, there’s a lot more here. There’s way more to sales than just, “Oh, relationship? Yay, buy my crap,” right? That’s the thing. So we have to be aware of that. We have to know that it’s going to take time. This is not slam and wow, yay, close business. This is really a time consuming, value adding conversation as much as you can, as often as you can offline.
Phil’s Advice to His Younger Self on How to Become Better at Selling · [32:57]
Will Barron:
Love it, makes total sense. And with that, Phil, I’ve got one final question, mate, that I ask everyone that comes on the show. And that is, if you could go back in time and speak to your younger self, what would be the one piece of advice you’d give him to help him become better at selling?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Yeah. So if I was going to tell my younger self something, I’d say, first of all, you don’t need to know as much as you think you do, so be more confident and say no to more people. Say no to more people, not every job was a perfect fit for you, young Phil. You should remember that, so don’t always say yes, sometimes say no.
How to Develop Your Ability to Say No More Often · [33:28]
Will Barron:
How do we develop this ability to say no? And I appreciate this is a whole podcast and a four-hour course and a kind of a seminar in itself, but is there any techniques used to develop it? Because it’s something I’m working hard on at the moment with more and more opportunities coming towards me, my focus has always been just growing the show and that leads to more opportunities. You’re growing the audience has always led to more revenue, more opportunities, bigger guests, all this good stuff. And so how does someone like me or someone in sales who perhaps needs to turn down customers when they’re not the perfect fit to spend time with bad customers? How do we develop this almost like a muscle for saying no versus maybe which is what I fall into a lot of the time?
Phil Gerbyshak:
Yeah, I do too. I’m certainly not perfect at this, but I think the best way that I’ve found is to think about my why. If I’m really clear on my why, and it doesn’t say, “Heck yes,” if I’m not ready to slam the phone down and, “Yay, I’m going to do this,” if that’s not the answer, then I have to say no. And that means though, that I have enough in the pipeline, I have enough in the funnel to say yes to, and that takes time. You have to get enough good yeses to know what a good no is. So take the time, practise that and then ask unreasonably. There’s this guy by the name, Jia Jiang, he’s got rejection therapy. I encourage you to check out his stuff, get used to people telling you no, making ridiculous, outrageous asks that maybe people say yes to, but get ready for them to say no to you because that will say, “Oh, well, if they could say no, then I bet I could too.”
Parting Thoughts · [35:52]
Will Barron:
Love it. I love it. And again, well, perhaps we’ll have you in the future to dive in some of this because I feel like there’s a more of a conversation to had about it. I know there’s the famous… I think it was Stanford Prison Experiment, where they were actually in prison, where they fake electrocuting people, and that came from an experiment of asking people on the train like, “Can I have your seat?” And most people would say, “Yes, no worries,” and then you’d have a policeman with you, and then everyone would say yes in this. I think, perhaps we know, perhaps our guts are telling us that we’re not adding enough value to make these asks, and so that’s why we’re weirded out by nos versus the fact that if we do everything right, they come more often. I don’t know, there’s whole conversation there, Phil. But with that, mate, tell us a little bit about the digital selling bootcamp you got coming up, and where we can find out more about you as well.
Phil Gerbyshak:
Sure. Well, Vengreso is a company that I’m in. We have a digital selling bootcamp, really focused on a lot of the social type tools. It’s a four-part series. It’s 500 bucks at digitalsellingbootcamp.com, and we’ve got all the stuff you need to take you to the next level of sales. So it’s how to connect, how to find your right people, how to engage, all the important stuff that you need to do business in today’s age. So it makes it really easy to take that next step. Because a lot of folks, they struggle with the tools, they struggle sometimes with the mindset. Sometimes they struggle with just asking questions and being of value and of even having a profile that’s really customer-focused. So we make that super simple.
“The reason that we fail as salespeople is not because our product or service is bad, it’s not because the other person doesn’t have an inclination to buy. It’s because we don’t have the right mindset, we have commission breath, and are not confident in what we’re selling.” – Phil Gerbyshak · [37:02]
Phil Gerbyshak:
Again, it’s four parts. Come on, it’s all virtual. So you sign in, we use GoToMeeting or Zoom, depending on when we’re doing this. And it’s recorded, so you can then take it. It’s got homework. So it’s got practical and tactical stuff, as well as some smart things that you can put in your head. Because, often, the reason that we fail as salespeople is not because our product or service is bad, it’s not because the other person doesn’t have an inclination to buy, it’s because we don’t have the right mindset. It’s because we have commission breath. It’s because we’re not confident in what we’re selling, that we haven’t added enough value. So those are the things that we teach in the Vengreso social selling bootcamp, and you can get it at digitalsellingbootcamp.com. Just go there, takes your right to the spot on the Vengreso website.
Phil Gerbyshak:
Then if you want to know more about me, feel free to connect to me on LinkedIn. Gerbyshak is G-E-R-B-Y-S-H-A-K, just search for Gerbyshak. Look for me on LinkedIn. If you like Twitter, that’s cool too, Facebook. I’m not super active on Instagram or Snapchat, but I’m there, but I encourage you, feel free to reach out, and then I’m going to give you one last way. For those of you that are really brave, call me, pick up the phone and call. It’s (414) 640-7445. And Will, I’ll make sure that you have that, but put that in the notes. I want to encourage you, folks. Call or text, don’t be shy. Say that you heard me on The Salesman Podcast with Will Barron and let me know, hey, how can I help you? I’ll do my best to add value to your life so that we can work together or not that I can send you to somebody else that can help you even better than I can.
Will Barron:
Love it. Sales Nation, take this as a challenge for me that if you’re kind of feeling like manning up and getting on with things and getting some free advice and perhaps even… How would you even describe it? I wouldn’t go… Maybe you’d say different, but perhaps not would go as deep as the word mentoring, but this is an opportunity here from Phil. If you just listen to him and I for 37 minutes, if you enjoyed this show, go for it. It’s obviously crazy opportunity not to. So I hugely appreciate that, Phil. All into everything that we just mentioned in the show notes this episode over at salesmanpodcast.com. And with that, I want to thank you for your insights. I want to thank you for sharing with the audience. I’ve tried to kind of portray this as well that social selling, however you want to define it, it’s not necessarily easy. It can be somewhat defined as simple, but it works. And so I really enjoyed the fact that you kind of put that across the episode. And with that, mate, I want to thank you for joining us on The Salesman Podcast.
Phil Gerbyshak:
Thanks, Will. It was a good time.
