In today’s episode of the Social Selling Show, Daniel and Will share tips on how to handle haters on LinkedIn, deal with negative comments, and differentiate between trolls and positive criticism.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- The Daily Sales LinkedIn Page
- The Million Pound LinkedIn Message by Daniel Disney
Transcript
Will Barron:
This episode of the show is brought to you from the salesman.org HubSpot studio. Welcome to the Social Selling Show with myself, Will Barron, founder over at salesman.org and the king of social selling, Daniel Disney. Daniel, how is it going?
Daniel Disney:
It is going very well, Will, as always busy trying to help the world use LinkedIn for the better and excited for today’s subject. I think today’s one, certainly not one I see being discussed on many podcasts or many video content streams going out there, but I think it’s a really important topic that’s going to connect with a lot of people. So, yeah, excited for today’s subject.
Will Barron:
For sure. And do you know what? I’ve just ruined it now, but we’re getting better on the show because you just teed that up perfectly for me to tell the audience that we’re going to dive into dealing with haters and trolls on LinkedIn, and perhaps we can cover social media more generally as well. So, I apologise, I just ruined the perfect tee up to talk about the topic. But I feel like the connection, the conversation is getting better and better every episode. And with that, Daniel, let me ask you this mate, let’s start with an anecdote, perhaps, have you ever experienced a hater, a troll on LinkedIn, that really made you go, “Oh, crap,” and made you second guess yourself? Or are you just so thick skinned that this doesn’t affect you whatsoever?
Daniel Disney:
Good question, Will. I have been trolled a lot over the years and a lot when I started using LinkedIn, seven, eight years ago. The first couple of years was probably the worst for trolling. When you’re really being more active, reaching more people, getting more engagement, that tends to be where more trolls come out of the woodwork. In terms of a reaction, I have a layer of thick skin, but I’m still a human. So, I’m pretty good at dealing with it, not letting it get to me deep down, but it doesn’t stop it having an impact. And it was last year, for the first time ever, I actually blocked someone who took trolling way too far, but yeah, water off a duck’s back to an extent, but that doesn’t stop it having an impact.
Daniel’s Experience with Haters and Trolls on LinkedIn · [00:56]
Will Barron:
Sure. So, we’ll touch on perhaps how, because I’m the same as you, I feel like I’m relatively thick-skinned here, but we could perhaps touch on how we could develop a thick skin. And if you work in sales, you’re probably thicker skinned than most, at the outset. I’ve only blocked one person for trolling or being a hater. I’ve blocked many people for just spamming me. Some of the audience may know this, because we did a show years ago now, covering some of what we’re going to cover here on the Salesman podcast. And it was a guy, he was a sales trainer. I’ll just say it, because the audience will know … You’ll be able to find him. He’s not got a big audience, but he’s a Sandler sales trainer. And he just, for some reason, just tried to rinse me.
Will Barron:
Now, I like a bit of banter. I like going back and forth. And I was also on holiday in Rome, chilling out, nice glass of beer as all this was going on. So, I knew I had this in my back pocket, Daniel, that I could just say, “Hey, you’re doing all this and this.” Basically, he was saying that I was a fraud. I wasn’t making any money. I was lying about all the training that we were doing. The numbers were … And obviously, the numbers on LinkedIn are there, they’re there for everyone to see. Whether it’s followers, whether it’s likes and comments and stuff. So, you can’t really BS it too much.
Will Barron:
Anyway, he was going on and on. He was like a dog going at a bone, and it ended with me just sending this picture and the post went semi-viral. It had like 50,000 views on it, which is really good for me, both then and now, of me just chilling out, flipping the bird off, with a beer in front of the Coliseum. Right? And for me, that was an example of, if you’re going to respond, how to respond in that, it just doesn’t bother me. It didn’t affect me. Now in hindsight, I should have just not responded to any of this at all. And so, he clearly did get under my skin slightly.
How to Differentiate Between Trolls and Positive Criticism · [04:28]
Will Barron:
That was the last time I actually blocked an individual. But I didn’t feel like I was getting bullied. I didn’t feel like I was getting harassed. I felt like someone was trying to have a go and he didn’t realise that I’m not crazy successful by any means, but I was doing fine at the time and we’re doing fine now. And he didn’t quite grasp the future of LinkedIn, media, podcasts, and getting attention. And so, I just felt fine showing him up. So, with all that I said, Daniel, and I’ll probably link to that picture in the show notes of this episode. I might blur out some bits of it. But how do we ascertain, Daniel, whether we are getting bantered, we’re getting picked on, or whether we’re actually being harassed and we should block the person and report the comments and content to LinkedIn itself?
Daniel Disney:
I think the two things you need to think about, Will, is what is being said and how often it’s being said. So, it could be one message that’s horrendously aggressive, that you think, “No, that’s way over the line of banter.” Or if it’s more subtle and maybe not as aggressive, but if it’s done consistently, then you might start to see a pattern and think, “Okay, this isn’t cool, this isn’t right.” But I like your reaction, honestly. I think that’s how a lot of people want to react when they get trolling messages. There’s one thing you mentioned, which is not to say, how can you avoid it, but how can you deal with it sometimes in a better way?
Daniel Disney:
And I guess, the first thing that’s probably worth us discussing is being open and honest and accountable for whether there’s any truths in the comments that the troll is making, because let’s be fair, social media, the internet, is open game. People can say what they want. They can claim to be whatever they want. I could sit here now, Will, and tell you, “Do you know what? I closed a $1 billion deal on LinkedIn. I’m the best.” And I can say that, there is nothing to stop me writing that right now, to however many people that are going to see it. So, there are unfortunately, a lot of people who do stretch the truth, who do make claims that aren’t true. And with a bit of digging and we talked about this on our last episode, talking about experts, you can soon find out.
“Always be open, honest, and authentic, be yourself. It doesn’t matter what job title you have. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have. It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t know, people on social media want to connect with real human beings. So, don’t try and be something you’re not. When you do, unfortunately, you may open yourself up where people may challenge you.” – Daniel Disney · [06:37]
Daniel Disney:
And it’s those types of posts that bring out … And I’m sure we all have felt it at some point as well. I read stuff and I think, “Oh, what a load of rubbish.” And you get the inklings of, I really, … And I sometimes feel like, I want to say something. Now, the difference between a troll or not a troll, is they do it and sometimes they don’t think twice. But the first thing I think you should always do, and I encourage this to everyone that I meet, speak, train, is always be open, honest, and authentic, be yourself. It doesn’t matter what job title you have. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have. It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t know, people on social media want to connect with real human beings. So, don’t try and be something you’re not, when you do, unfortunately, you may open yourself up where people may challenge you and actually, maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re wrong in their delivery. Again, nothing about being negative or aggressive.
“From a first step basis, if you’re going to use LinkedIn, social media, social selling, the first step is, just be honest. And then, if you do get trolling, instantly it’s not going to be as impactful as it perhaps could be if you were stretching the truth a bit.” – Daniel Disney · [07:30]
Daniel Disney:
But the first thing, the first step is just be open and honest. That’s why, and same for you, I can imagine, the trolling comments don’t impact us maybe as much, because I know for me and exactly what you were just saying, Will, we’re always transparent and clear with what we say. We don’t claim to be anything we’re not. And so, when people do troll, we know there’s no substance to it, so that instantly makes it a little bit easier. Yeah, from a first step basis, if you’re going to use LinkedIn, social media, social selling, the first step is, just be honest. And then, if you do get trolling, instantly it’s not going to be as impactful as it perhaps could be if you were stretching the truth a bit.
Will Barron:
I think that is an incredible point, which wasn’t in the show notes, for us to talk about. So, I really appreciate that, Daniel. I can think of a few people, and you’ve probably seen this as well. The audience have probably seen this, where someone says something, someone calls them out for it, and then cause there was a white lie told at first, there’s a slightly bigger lie or spin or ignorance of the comments and just then getting personal, to get back at the person. And we see this and then it can escalate and escalate. And it’s far easier just to not lie. I think this is a misconception and this is something that perhaps, and maybe not age, but experience in the marketplace will teach … It’s taught me and it’ll teach the audience as well.
Will Barron:
And I’m removing age because there’s probably people who are 50 or 60, who are just getting on LinkedIn now, who might be tuning into the show. But when you lie, you start to spin this little web and then you got to lie on top of it, and then you’ve got to remember what you lied about or fibbed about in the first place. So now your brain is going, “Oh heck, this is stressful.” And someone calls you out for something, so you got to do it again. And this has been measured, it’s been well-studied, that these webs of lies, obviously were that metaphor comes from, it is literally so stressful for your brain, that it leads to more of them and then it all falls apart in the end. So, I think you’re totally right.
Will Barron:
And the word I would perhaps use is, just be congruent, just whatever persona you have, because perhaps people do have an online persona, like for example, myself, I talk quite loud and fast, especially on the show and it’s something I need to work on, I need to improve my legibility and remove some of the ums and uhs, but then when I jump off air, I’ll just sit down and read a book and have a chill. And so, there’s a slightly different on air, online personality than there is perhaps a real-time, in person personality. And so, I appreciate that as well.
Is There Ever a Time When Someone Has to Reply to Online Trolls? · [09:49]
Will Barron:
But as long as you’re congruent with your messaging, what you’re promising, and what you’re offering as you go throughout your LinkedIn social selling journey, you’re going to open yourself up to far less of all of this. But with that said, Daniel, is there a time to poke the haters? Is there a time to prod the people and get at these people who might just be negative, they might be trolls, they might be idiots, is there an opportunity here to poke them a little bit, to perhaps amplify some of our content on occasion?
“If you’ve built a bit of an audience and you’ve got a budding, growing personal brand, sometimes when people write those trolling, hating comments, your audience will come and defend you. And there is honestly nothing more rewarding or positive than that, when your connections start to then counter what they’re saying. But 50% of the time, sometimes you just have to respond and my mentality is always kill them with kindness. Don’t stoop to their level, don’t get aggressive, don’t be reactive, but be politely positive in maybe trying to correct them, or open their eyes.” – Daniel Disney · [10:19]
Daniel Disney:
Oh, that’s an interesting point, Will. Now, I’ll be honest, I’m 50/50 on this. So, 50% of the time I ignore and that is, as you say, sometimes the right thing to do. And on occasion, if you’ve built a bit of an audience and you’ve got a building, growing personal brand, sometimes when people write those trolling, hating comments, your audience will come and defend you. And there is honestly nothing more rewarding or positive than that, when your connections start to then counter what they’re saying. But 50% of the time, sometimes you just have to respond and my mentality is always kill them with kindness. Don’t stoop to their level, don’t get aggressive, don’t be reactive, but be politely positive in maybe trying to correct them, or open their eyes, or maybe point out some of the errors in what they say. And yeah, by doing so, that can amplify a little bit.
“If you were to try and directly take them on and get into an argument, the risk would outweigh the payoff because, and this is the most important thing, all or a percentage of your prospects and customers will see the whole thing. They’ll see the post, they’ll see the comment, and they’ll see your replies, they’ll see your reactions, they’ll see everything you’re doing. And that’s going to make an impression on them, positive or negative. So, we always have to remember everything we do and say on social media is potentially visible by our prospects and our customers.” – Daniel Disney · [11:05]
Daniel Disney:
But if you were to try and go directly, head on, take them on and get into an argument, the risk would way outweigh the payoff because and this is the most important thing, Will, all or a percentage of your prospects and customers will see the whole thing. They’ll see the post, they’ll see the comment, and they’ll see your replies, they’ll see your reactions, they’ll see everything you’re doing. And that’s going to make an impression on them, positive or negative. So, we always, always have to remember everything we do and say on social media is potentially visible by our prospects and our customers, could be our biggest customers, it could be prospects that could become our biggest customers. And maybe by reacting maybe more emotionally than logically could scare away people. So yes, it’s okay sometimes to respond and if you do, again, take time before you do, don’t do it in the moment. Take a breather, calm down, compose yourself. And as I say, do it in a polite, kind way.
Will Barron:
I have two canned responses that I use all the time and we’ll touch on it in a second, but I use it more on YouTube because YouTube is a lot more vicious than what LinkedIn is, right? And two, one, Grant Cardone told me this in an email, years ago, when we were going back and forth and he said, this is what he used to do. Now he doesn’t reply to anything because he doesn’t have to, to amplify his content. Right? And what he would always say, and this is what I say is, “Thank you for the attention.” So, if someone’s calling me all kinds of slanderous things and they’re abusing their ability to be in front of my eyeballs, I’ll just say, “Thank you for the attention.”
Will Barron:
And they’ll comment again, call me an idiot, get even more aggressive, I’ll just say, “Thank you for the additional attention.” And I’ll just do that over and over and over so that I’m doubling the comment count on the posts, adding more fuel to the fire to get these people riled up. But there’s nothing that they can really do, say, or react to, that doesn’t make them look even more stupid after the fact. When you say, “Hey, I appreciate the fact you’ve commented because this is going to now go and reach more people.” As long as it’s not constructive feedback, in which case I’ll thank them for it and we’ll perhaps engage in a conversation. But if it is just trolling and spamming, I just say that, and that came from Grant Cardone.
Will Barron:
The other thing I do say, which I do purposefully to rile people up, and I’ll talk about it off air with you, if you like. Well, there was one idiot who accused me of stealing … And he’s a multi-millionaire, really successful in the sales software space, he accused me of stealing one of his product names, which we didn’t, because we had it first, we had it years and years ago. And he was threatening legal action, he was kicking off and he started commenting on all our posts. I was like, “Why do you have the time to do this when seemingly you’re running a successful company?” So, every comment he made, I just posted, and this might be slightly British, I don’t know how well this will translate, but I’d just post, “Oh, name, you’re a silly billy.”
Will Barron:
So, every comment, every time he abused us, every time … Because he was being very nasty and could cost us cash in essentially slanderous comments, he was just lying, he was bullshitting. But I literally just put his name, “You’re a silly billy.” And this happened then in the emails that went back and forth when he was threatening legal action, because I knew he wouldn’t go forward with it. I’d just respond, “Hey, you’re being a bit of a silly billy.” Then I blocked him on LinkedIn, I blocked his emails from going into my inbox, and I’ve never heard from him since. So, he was all bark and no bite.
Will Barron:
It’s one thing bullying someone online, which is terrible, it’s not as bad maybe in certain cases because it’s less personal, but when people are threatening legal action and you know that they’ve got more resources, or not them personally, but their organisation has more resources to take someone to court over that kind of thing. I just ignored it and I said that silly billy comment. You can’t compete with that. There’s no comeback when someone calls you a silly Billy. That was my response there.
Daniel Disney:
That’s my new favourite thing, Will. Silly billy, I’m going to remember that. I need to find an opportunity to put that in a reply.
The Pros and Cons of Deleting Negative Comments from Your LinkedIn Posts · [15:07]
Will Barron:
So, with that said then, Daniel, and this will depend on scale, I’m sure. In fact, this might be an interesting case study of you on your personal profile versus the Daily Sales. Should we at a certain point, start to avoid some of the comments and just ignore them? If we’ve got enough comments in that we don’t need to be engaging as much and as often as what we need to perhaps, and we don’t need to respond to every single one at a certain point of scale. Can we just start to ignore some of this and just take ownership and accountability that my life, my time, isn’t worth the fact that one or two idiots a day are going to get me riled up?
Daniel Disney:
Yeah. I mean, there should always be a level of ignoring it. Trolling comments, haters, whatever it may be, there’s always going to be a layer of ignoring. Now, when it comes to managing comments, I do think it’s very valuable and important to try and at least monitor them. And as you say, one thing we haven’t talked about, Will, is the option to delete the comment. So, you can on LinkedIn delete someone’s comment on your post, and that is a choice you do have. Now again, you have the question of, okay, what are the benefits and cons of deleting it. Again, it could be better to leave it and let other people in your network reply or if you’ve got a good reply, or if you want to call them a silly billy, you can then reply to it, but you do have the option to delete it and then it goes, and it’s gone. And sometimes that is the best thing to do.
Daniel Disney:
Sometimes there is no real benefit to come from tackling it. And actually, do you know what? Delete it, get rid of it. Sometimes they may come back and re-comment and mention that you’ve deleted it and the controversy, “Oh, they deleted my comment.” And then, you can delete it again and then, ultimately get to the point of blocking them. So yeah, you always have that choice. And there have been comments that I’ve deleted because it’s simply not worth the effort, nor is it going to be of any benefit to me or them. It’s going to be worse for them to drag this out. It’s going to make them look bad. There’s no need to do that, some of the time.
“In terms of managing comments, do read through them, do monitor them, maybe some get deleted, maybe some you reply to, but what you don’t want to do is miss opportunities where maybe they are highlighting something that is genuine. Maybe there is something you’ve missed. Maybe there is a mistake you’ve made, we’re all human. And actually, do you know what? They’re trying to help you and it’s not a negative. If we totally switch off to everything and anything negative, we may miss, as you say, constructive criticism that could actually help us.” – Daniel Disney · [17:03]
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, in terms of managing comments, do read through them, do monitor them, maybe some get deleted, maybe some you reply to, but what you don’t want to do is miss opportunities where maybe they are highlighting something that is genuine. Maybe there is something you’ve missed. Maybe there is a mistake you’ve made, we’re all human. And actually, do you know what? They’re trying to help you and it’s not a negative. If we totally switch off to everything and anything negative, we may miss, as you say, constructive criticism that could actually help us.
Will Barron:
For sure. Now, I think if you’re an actual celebrity, you should not be reading the comments ever, because if you’re getting 1,000 comments on everything you post, if you’re Joe Rogan, if you’re someone who’s semi-controversial, or not semi, pretty controversial, at that level, they’d clearly just hire someone to manage all of this on your behalf. But for us mere mortals, Daniel, even with the audience that you have, I think you’re dead right, that we should be managing some of this. And you mentioned something earlier on and I just want to circle back to it, and that is the network effect of LinkedIn, because a comment isn’t just a message that we’re seeing, right? It’s public.
Will Barron:
And I’ve had the experience where someone called out me and everything that I was doing because one of the podcasts is called the Salesman Podcast and the domain is salesman.org. And this woman basically wrote essentially, a hit piece on the fact that I’m clearly a sexist, I’m clearly this and that and this, and it got quite a deal of traffic and I had a bunch of people reach out to me of, “Hey, are you going to respond to this, are you going to do this, do this?” And I didn’t really want to respond to it because me responding to it, adds a layer of validity to it, rightly or wrongly. It means that this is worth considering so that it could be the truth.
Will Barron:
So, I sat there and pondered, and I reached out to Deb Calvert, who I’d just had on the podcast, a few weeks before. And I get on well with Deb, I like her. And I just asked her, “Deb, you are a female sales leader. You are well-known in the space. Do you think that the name is sexist? Do you think that I am … Do we have far more white men on the show than we do women minorities?” Whatever it is. And she’s like, “No, this person is essentially being a silly billy.” And then Deb jumped in and made a few comments, tagged a few other female sales leaders that had both been on the show and also were fans of the show, that I didn’t even know existed, but she knew that had listened to our conversations I’ve had with Deb over the years. And this woman ended up apologising, it was a LinkedIn article, removing the LinkedIn article and essentially redacting everything that she was banging on about.
How to Deal with Haters Using the “Network Effect” · [20:05]
Will Barron:
Now, she obviously got a bunch of exposure on this and you could say, “Well, is all exposure good? Is bad exposure worth avoiding?” But I leveraged there the power of the network itself. And this was a few years ago. So, if I’ve got seven or 8,000 followers right now, maybe I had three or four at the time. So, not like you, Daniel, with tens of thousands, but mere mortal numbers of followers. I managed to negate the situation by the network effects of the platform that we’re on as well. So, if you were to coach me on this, Daniel, was that the appropriate way to go about it? Would you have done things any differently, if you were being called out for something that you knew people in your network could help get rid of?
Daniel Disney:
No, I think that was one of the best responses that you could have done, Will. I mean, the fact that they had written an article about it, that’s extreme trolling, that’s quite high level trolling and hating. But I love what you did, you basically went, and it’s kind of the same thing I was trying to say, that kill them with kindness mentality, that delivering proof, proof is in the pudding. It’s actually showing them, do you know what? Answering their question, but showing them that they’re wrong. And obviously, it’s very smart that they redacted it, got rid of the article. You were right to pull on people. I’ve done it a few times. In the early days when I started teaching LinkedIn, there were a lot of trolls and haters that challenged my credibility as a trainer, or challenged whether I’d actually trained anyone or any results had come from it.
Daniel Disney:
So, I reached out and asked the people that I had trained, “If you don’t mind, would you be able to just reply and maybe correct some of the allegations that they’ve made?” And they did. And again, that person then stepped down. Same as when I started speaking. The first time I started keynote speaking and I put keynote speaker on my LinkedIn profile, loads of people would then come up and say, “You’re not a keynote speaker. I bet you’ve never spoken on any stages.” And again, if you can showcase either videos or footage or just tag in websites where you’re listed as a keynote speaker, you can … Sometimes you need to prove it, again, just do it in a positive way. It’s not a tit for tat. It’s not a, “You’re wrong, I’m right.”
Daniel Disney:
It’s a, “Look, I’m sorry that’s what you think. I’m sorry that’s how you feel. I’m just going to try and correct you so that you know, and anyone else who may have been misinformed can understand.” Again, kindness and genuineness. I think we’re going to talk about ego in a minute, but take ego out of the equation. And this taps into ego, because it’s insulting you, it’s questioning you. It goes right into ego. You need to remove ego from the equation and deal with it logically. Take away emotion, take away reaction, deal with it logically. So yeah, I think how you dealt with that was spot on. I’ve done similar things in the past. You can often rely on people. If you’ve built your brand on good, authentic, genuine layers, then of course, you’re going to be able to rely on people. But if you’ve again, built it without that, then you may not have people to rely on.
“If you’re doing the right thing for long enough, if you help enough people for long enough, people will stick up for you. If you are full of BS and you’re spinning these white lies that might seem harmless in the moment, you’ve got nothing to fall back on.” – Will Barron · [22:38]
Will Barron:
Spot on. If you’re doing the right thing for long enough, if you help enough people for long enough, people will stick up for you. If you are full of BS and you’re spinning these white lies, that might seem harmless in the moment, you’ve got nothing to fall back on. And two things we’ll end up on, ego now, and then, whether LinkedIn is actually the nicest place to be on the internet with regards to comments, we’ll cover that in a second.
How to Manage Your Ego When Handling Haters and Positive Criticism on LinkedIn · [22:47]
Will Barron:
But with regards to ego, how do we ascertain … The problem is, we are both probably unconsciously competent in this because we’ve both been on LinkedIn, social media, producing content for long enough that our skin has, and both in success in sales as well prior, that our skin’s probably by default thicker than maybe the average person who may be listening to this, Daniel. So, I feel like we’re unconsciously competent in some of this, but how do we know when our ego is getting in the way of all of this? How do we know if what we’ve been given is constructive criticism and we’re taking an emotional response to it. And is there any pathways or frameworks to not respond and to have a think about this, rather than reply in the moment?
Daniel Disney:
I think the biggest thing is understanding yourself and your feelings. So, I know when I’m emotionally reacting, because like a kettle, the water’s boiling, the steam’s coming out. I can feel that. It is a feeling. Your body feels something when you’re reacting emotionally. Your body, your brain, all these things react. And so, you can tell, okay, clearly something’s hit me deeper and I need to reflect and understand why. I think the biggest thing you need to be able to do is try and look at the bigger picture. Try not to take a closed-minded view, they’re wrong, your right, whatever it may be, and actually try to open their mind, put yourself in their shoes, try and look at it from all angles. Okay, what may have made them say that? What am I saying that might be incorrect or wrong? How have I presented it? Try and look at it from as many different angles.
Daniel Disney:
I always like to put everything on the table, all the cards on the table and analyse it from all different angles and then be competent and confident in yourself to look at okay, if I was wrong, why would I be wrong? And how can I perhaps go about this right? But yeah, it’s trying to look at it with your brain and not with your heart. And the biggest thing often, that emotional reaction happens instantly. So, when you first read it, that tends to be when the emotional reaction comes back. And I’ve done this before, it happens, I’m not a massively emotionally reactive type person, on a few occasions, things have gotten to me like that.
Daniel Disney:
And the best thing I can do is go and walk around for five minutes, 10 minutes. Talk to someone, whether it’s my partner or friends, colleagues, people I know, and vent, so let that steam come out. Then sit back, reread it again and just process it a lot more. Yeah, it’s usually the emotion comes first, so don’t react straight away, irregardless. And they say that with emails, don’t they, Will?
Will Barron:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Daniel Disney:
If you see something and you’re going to send an email, they say, “Don’t send it, don’t click send. Write it, come back to it, 10, 15 minutes later, reread it. And if you’re still in the same mindset, then yeah, you may want to get other people to look at it first.” But yeah, think before you post.
Will Barron:
You have more self control than what I do, Daniel. I have had comments, emails, whatever it is, deleted them in the moment. I then come back an hour later, undeleted them, unfound them, gone back through my trash in my email and pulled it back up and then re-pondered over it. The only thing I can do, and I’ve done this for years now, and I’ve never had any issues with the delay it causes, I sleep on it. I very literally just leave it there and I say, “I’ll come back to this tomorrow.” And 100% of the time, I come back with a different opinion, a more logical outlook on things. Typically, I’m more optimistic as well. I think I’m very optimistic just by my wiring, by default.
Will Barron:
But when you pull the emotion out of the situation, I guess, more logical, I can be more, I guess, I’m less emotionally tied to what has been suggested. I can be more positive and more optimistic about it. And so, I have to just sleep on it. That’s the only solution I’ve found. I don’t know whether it’s your subconscious brain is starting to do some processing when you’re asleep and it’s pondering on things and can work things out, and go back and forth and build a better argument, both sides. And you may have noticed this as well, and just how I’m wired, I like to play devil’s advocate. You can say, “This person is a terrible person.” The first thing I think when you say that is, “Oh, well, what if it was the childhood, the upbringing, yada, yada.” And I try and essentially make excuses for things.
Will Barron:
If you say something is, “This is the best.” Immediately, I go, “Oh, well, that might not be the case.” So, just allowing myself that bit of time to think about things, again, unconsciously, I’m not sat there pondering on it all evening. I’m pretty good at letting things drop until I need to reengage it. But just sleeping on things has solved so many potential crisis points for me, where I was just about to throw some flames someone else’s way, whether it be on social media, or email, or whatever it is. And this is both for internal emails in companies, from your boss, internal stakeholders, whatever it is, if you can get away with sleeping on it, that’s been my advice and that’s what I’ve always done.
Is LinkedIn Probably the Nicest Social Media Platform In terms of Dealing with Trolls and Haters? · [27:53]
Will Barron:
So with that, Daniel, we’ll wrap up with this, mate. Is it fair to say LinkedIn, of all the social media networks, even though we’ve just been going on about the experiences that we’ve had on the platform, both good and bad, via the comments and messaging, is it probably the nicest place on the internet? Because I guess, you’re so tied into your actual personality, your name, your picture, your company, your boss is easily findable on there. Is LinkedIn the nicest place to be? To just to put all of this back in context.
Daniel Disney:
LinkedIn can be a very dark place and people can be very negative and aggressive, but you are right, Will, I think in reflection, it probably is the nicest social media site. Now, I experienced this on YouTube, and I remember a few YouTube videos when I started to put content on YouTube, some of the comments, I was shocked, I was like, “Wow, there is no holds barred with this. People are just going in.” And then, you look at Twitter and people go nuts on Twitter. And what we’re now seeing, we talked about this in a few episodes ago, but even platforms like Clubhouse, Clubhouse now, trolling is getting really aggressive. And it almost becomes like this sort of grab your pitchfork mentality, where groups of people will come in to take down people that they think are saying incorrect things.
Daniel Disney:
So yeah, I think in the grand scheme of things, LinkedIn is probably the nicest, but by no means does that mean it’s nice because people can still be very negative and aggressive and I’ve seen and had horrible things said, and I’ve seen equally horrible things said. So yeah, LinkedIn is bad, but unfortunately, it is a lot worse out there as well.
Audience Questions · [30:12]
Will Barron:
Sure. I think to juxtapose that, LinkedIn might be more personal attacks because it’s an individual attacking you, whereas when I get comments on YouTube and like if someone said some of the things that people have said to me on YouTube, to my face, especially in front of my family or people I care about, I would smack them one, literally. I’ve never had that from LinkedIn. It’s always been just pot shots and sniping, but on YouTube, there’s been people that have had to literally report to YouTube, click that big report button and flag it as harassment. Now, I’m not taking it personally, it doesn’t bother me, but I’m aware that if that individual is doing that to other people, there are people that could be affected by it. Cool. Well, let’s wrap up the show with an audience question and yeah, if you want to get a copy of Daniel’s best … Am I right in saying bestselling book?
Daniel Disney:
It is a bestselling book, Will.
Will Barron:
Best-selling book, The Million-Pound LinkedIn Message, then comment below this video, drop your questions, and we’ll hopefully answer them in a future show and Daniel will send you a copy of his book over. I’m scrolling here because I’ve not got my laptop in front of me, because the battery died. So, it’s less seamless than what it usually is. But where we have a question from, as [Vishy 00:30:38] hopefully I’m pronouncing that right, Vishy says, “I did see one of your recent Social Selling Shows with Daniel Disney and I wanted to ask the question, how could one demonstrate product capability and close a sales deal via LinkedIn, if he or she has access to live stories and links and of course, posting, which path would you recommend to make sure that a sale is closed at the earliest?” So, I guess what this chap is asking is, how can we use LinkedIn to shrink a sales cycle by having more access to these individuals than we would if we were just doing a email or cold calling cadence?
“There are lots of ways you can create content that doesn’t directly pitch your product, but does so subtly. So again, it’s not about going out and saying, “Here’s my product. Here’s what it does. Here’s why it’s so amazing.” But it’s, let me talk about the industry, let me talk about something that’s going to be beneficial to you, and subtly within that, discuss some of the features that products can have. And then at the end, do you know what? Our product actually does this as well.” – Daniel Disney · [31:25]
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, it’s a good question and I think there’s that fine balance of, and you can hear it in the question itself, of, I just want to pitch my product and close the deal. And you need to take a little step back from that. And there is lots of ways you can create content that doesn’t directly pitch your product, but does subtly. So again, it’s not about going out and saying, “Here’s my product. Here’s what it does. Here’s why it’s so amazing.” But it’s, let me talk about the industry, let me talk about something that’s going to be beneficial to you, and subtly within that, discuss some of the features that products can have. And then at the end, do you know what? Our product actually does this as well.
“If you want to close deals, if you want to win business, make it about them. It’s not about you. It doesn’t matter how great your product is. What is it going to do for them? Do your research on them, give them as many good examples of how it’s helped similar people, but make it 100% about them.” – Daniel Disney · [32:05]
Daniel Disney:
So, there’s more value giving ways of demonstrating your product, which can be done through any form of content, text post, video, LinkedIn Live, et cetera. And then, from a closing perspective, again, it’s the whole thing we’ve talked about with messaging. It’s finding the right people, sending messages. If you want to close deals, if you want to win business, make it about them. It’s not about you. It doesn’t matter how great your product is. What is it going to do for them? Do your research on them, give them as many good examples of how it’s helped similar people, but make it 100% about them. So, give value in your content to demonstrate your product and then make sure the messaging is focused on them and what they’re going to get, not on essentially what you’re going to get.
Will Barron:
Sure. I agree with what you’re saying there, Daniel. Tell me if you agree with this, if you want to accelerate a deal, if you wanted to demonstrate capabilities, if you want to do all that more typical sales stuff, you are far better at booking a meeting and having an incredible presentation, conversation, a consultative meeting with an individual. And you can get a similar effect via LinkedIn, but I think what LinkedIn does very well, social selling in general, is that rather than working on one deal at a time, it allows you to multi-thread your deals so that it appears that the deal cycle has shrunk.
Social Selling and the Multi-threading Strategy · [33:04]
Will Barron:
But it’s not necessarily that it has shrunk, it might even be longer, social selling, but you’ve got more of them on the go at once, because one piece of content can hit many more of your buyers at the same time. That you’re getting more deals done in less time, because they’re multi-threaded as opposed to you travelling somewhere pre-COVID, spending the day with a customer, you could have reached 10 customers, 15 customers, at the same time, with a perhaps slightly less effective piece of content, but have more impact net overall than just that one meeting in itself. Is that fair to say?
Daniel Disney:
Will, I couldn’t have put it better myself. And actually, there’s two sides of that. There’s the whole multi-threading principle, but there’s also the presale process where you will be building a brand, giving out your content. Now, those prospects might not even be in your cycle and that might be three months, six months, a year, that you don’t realise that you’re actually building all of these foundations up. So, when you do initiate contact, maybe the deal cycle technically will be shorter because you’ve done all that legwork beforehand.
Daniel Disney:
So yeah, absolutely, you might have a slightly longer deal cycle, but you’re dealing with more deals. You also may decrease overall deal velocity because of the stuff you build up beforehand through the content you put out and again, that hyper personalization. So yeah, lots of different ways to look at it. But again, we boil down to the core fundamentals, which is, lead with your customer in mind, not with your product. Always about them, not about you, through content and messaging.
Will Barron:
Yeah. So, the perfect example of this, we just had someone sign up, I won’t call him out just in case he doesn’t want to be called out. But he’s an enterprise customer, he just signed up for 50-odd seats, it might be 60, 70 by the time the deal is closed fully, we’ll say 50 seats right now, which is a great deal for us. We’re excited to have his company on board over at salesman.org on our training programme. And he literally said, “Hey, I’ve been following you for five, six years now, since the very beginning.” He’s been consuming all of our content, he listens to the podcast regularly. He’s gone from salesperson, to sales manager, to sales leader in the startup. I say startup, highly funded, massive company startup that he represents.
“Once you start to build, add value at scale, the perceived deal cycle can be tiny, even though at scale, you’ve been influencing these people for long periods of time.” – Will Barron · [35:39]
Will Barron:
And so, if you were to track that in your CRM, from me reaching out to him … We didn’t help him with this product originally, but if I would have reached out to him five, six years ago, it would have looked like a five or six year sales cycle. But because he only literally asked for the pricing for that many seats, and then the contracts gone over to him today, the actual sales cycle that I’m dealing with is 12 hours or something like that. So, you’re right in what you’re saying in that, once you start to build, add value at scale, the perceived deal cycle can be tiny, even though at scale, you’ve been influencing these people for long periods of time, right?
Daniel Disney:
Yeah, exactly, Will, so you’re influencing people for maybe a longer period of time, but going back to your initial point, you’re influencing more than one person. So, you could be influencing a lot of people. So yeah, again, it works, but you’re doing it with the value first mindset, which is what works.
Will Barron:
Perfect. Well, we’ll wrap up this episode there. That was Daniel Disney, the king of social selling. My name is Will Barron, founder over at salesman.org. And that was the Social Selling Show.
Daniel Disney:
See you next time.
