In this week’s episode of the Social Selling Show, Will and Daniel talk about nurturing buyers through social selling and LinkedIn after they’ve made a purchase.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- Daniel’s LinkedIn
- Will’s LinkedIn
- Book – Seven Stories Every Salesperson Must Tell
- Book – The Extremely Successful Salesman’s Club
Transcript
Will Barron:
This episode of the show is brought to you from the Salesman.org HubSpot Studio. Welcome to the Social Selling Show, myself, Will Barron, founder of Salesman.org, and the King of Social Selling, Daniel Disney. How’s it going, mate?
Daniel Disney:
It is going really well, Will, excited to be back today. And yeah, we’ve got quite a good interesting topic today. Another one of those unique ones that you don’t see people talking about it on LinkedIn, it’s not something you see a lot of people writing about, but it’s a really important part of the process that I think a lot of people forget or ignore.
Why Do We Need to Nurture Buyers After the First Sale? · [00:45]
Will Barron:
It’s the least sexy thing we’re ever going to talk about on the show that might make you the most money. And on today’s episode we’re going to talk about how you can nurture your buyers via social selling, via social media, after they’ve made a purchase. And we’ll start with this, I think we’re going to be relatively aligned on this question, Daniel, but why do we need to nurture our buyers after the first sale has taken place?
Daniel Disney:
Well, hopefully, Will, the people watching and listening to this are long term invested in their customers and not just looking for that quick sale. Which we know, I mean unfortunately, a lot of the bad stereotypes of salespeople are the ones that are trying to get anyone and everyone to buy from them, and they’re only focused on that individual sale. Hopefully the people watching and listening to this are looking beyond that, which is why it’s important, because one customer in itself can create so many more opportunities, whether it’s buying again in a year’s time, whether it’s buying additional items, whether it’s connecting you with other departments to sell additional items, and then you’ve got referrals. So yeah, an individual customer has a tonne of opportunity, as long as you look past them as just an individual customer.
Will Barron:
So you’ve done all the hard work, you’ve done all the stressful work, you’ve done all the research, you’ve done that initial building of trust, why would you just let all that go to S and just not leverage it on the backend to do more deals? And we’re going to see this in most marketplaces, as everyone moves to a subscription model. I can’t think of an industry that isn’t moving towards a subscription model versus an upfront capital payment. As all that shifts, everyone’s commissions are going to shift towards, get so much in month one, it’s going to sound almost like a multi-level marketing scheme at some point. You get so much in month one, so much in month six, then so much in 18 months. And so it’s going to make total sense, eventually, for everyone to adopt this idea of selling once, and then either upselling via price increases, which happen naturally and organically, upselling and cross-selling different products within the space.
Will Barron:
And then, something that I don’t think we’ve done a show on, but we should definitely cover, getting referrals as well. So a buyer buys from you, you give them value, hopefully the amount of value that you promised, you’ve exchanged that for the cash, the capital that they’ve shared with you. You nurture them a little bit longer, and then if you’ve done a good job, they’re going to be happy to promote you internally, as you said, Daniel, within other departments, within other offices perhaps, if it’s a large enough organisation, but then also within their little peer groups as well. So we’ll definitely do a show on referrals in the not to distant future.
The Similarities and Differences Between Sales Nurturing Before and After a Sale · [03:15]
Will Barron:
So that’s the why we should do this, and hopefully people are sold on this idea, and you should be sold on it because tough shit, you’re going to have to do this as everyone moves to this subscription model. But how do we do it? Is it the same for process? Is nurturing from contact to close the same as nurturing from close to next close? Or do we need a different strategy?
Daniel Disney:
They’re similar, Will, but they are different, you’re going through a different process when you’re taking someone from prospecting through to close, and then it is a slightly different process, but they involve a lot of the same activities. We’ve covered this in a lot of the episodes, the whole process of giving value through your content, building your personal brand. And what’s amazing about LinkedIn and Social Selling is you do that beyond the sale, and we go away from, what I’m sure you and I both remember from our sales experiences, maybe once every three, six, 12 months, phoning up your customers, “Hey, Will, how’s it going? How’s the product? How’s everything? Great. Do you want to buy anything else? No. All right. I’ll give you another call in three months, six months, 12 months,” whatever it may be.
“When you’re sharing content of value, when you’re interacting in their content, you’re creating a conversation on a much more regular basis. So when you do decide to have deeper conversations, it’s not out of the blue, it’s not after an extended period of time, there’s been things happening in between that, and that helps elevate it and sometimes create even more opportunities.” -Daniel Disney · [04:13]
Daniel Disney:
And you flip that round to almost, potentially, daily interaction. When you’re sharing content of value, when you’re interacting in their content, you’re creating a conversation on a much more regular basis. So when you do decide to have more deeper conversations, it’s not out of the blue, it’s not after an extended period of time, there’s been things happening in between that, and that helps elevate it and sometimes create even more opportunities.
Why Your Content Needs to Resonate with Your Target Audience · [04:56]
Will Barron:
So we’ve never touched on this before, and I’ve never pondered on it too much because all our social efforts at Salesman.org, we only have one product, we don’t have a follow-on product, that’s a flaw in our business model. But most companies, especially if they’re hiring sales teams, and hiring larger teams, will have multiple products that go over the cycle of a customer journey. How do we prioritise our content on the daily that we’re posting? Should it be 100% new customers? Should it be new customers, customer success stories, and then upselling opportunities like 33/33/33? How do we schedule our content out when we know that via LinkedIn, let’s say we’re a year or two into the social selling process, so we’ve got lots of customers who have purchased from us already within our ecosystem, let’s make that assumption. What should the split be between the content? Or do we need to even go that in depth into it?
Daniel Disney:
The only answer to that question, Will, is going to be, it depends on what your priorities are, what your targets are. So if you an SDR and your priority is purely new customers, new prospects, then your focus should be on content that’s going to generate that. But if you’re an AE and you’re looking after accounts, whilst also hopefully prospecting for new ones, then you need to determine that split. But you’re absolutely right, that is an awareness piece people should be thinking about. Depending on what your targets are, make sure your content reflects that. So if it is maybe a 50/50, or a 30/30/30 split, then make sure that is reflected in your content. You have content going out designed to generate new business, you have content going out designed to nurture and give value to your existing customers, and then you have content going out to maybe expand or upsell or cross sell into new products as well. So yeah, it purely is dependent on what your targets are.
Will Barron:
We don’t need to go so in depth. I can’t remember the chap’s name, it’s going to come to me, I interviewed him on Salesman podcast a little while back. And he’s done tonnes and tonnes, his company has done tonnes of research, on the upselling process. He’s going to, if he ever watches this, he’ll slap me over the head when he sees me, on the back of it, because we went super into depth of this upselling process. And I’ll give the analogy, and I’ll come back to the company and his name in a second, if not, I’ll leave it in the show notes. But what he described was, we’ve got to be careful when upselling, because when you get someone through the sales process, they’ve gone through probably quite a bit of pain. The pain levels are up here, because the problem they have, they’ve probably gone through maybe even more pain to get the problem solved on the promise that the pain levels are going to drop dramatically after the sales process.
Will Barron:
So now we’ve got to be careful, because if we say, “Well, hey, you’ve been through this process. If you go through a little bit more pain, we can give you this.” Then they go, “Well, you’re just bringing me pain, over and over and over. You’re not really solving things.” This is where we get into these internet scam, get rich quick schemes, where you go, “Well, I’ll pay you 50 quid for this,” and I get onto a webinar. “And then I’ve got to pay 200 quid for this, and then I’ve got to pay five grand to get to a live event.” And eventually I’m going to get, or Scientology, and a whole bunch of different religions all kind of follow on the same premise here, you get past one barrier, and there’s multiple to go through.
Will Barron:
And he talked about this idea of the buyer, once they’ve made a purchase, they’ve got this big weight of, “We don’t want to change,” sat on top of them again. And so we’ve got to be careful because as soon as we lift that weight of, “I don’t want to change,” our competitors can go in and they go, “Well, okay, the game’s up here. We can move around. We can reinvestigate the original deal, and see if the competitors of the products have changed, the market has moved, and we can perhaps get a better deal than we did originally.”
Sales Stories: How to Use Storytelling to Your Advantage · [08:20]
Will Barron:
So we talked about this idea, this big weight being set on top of the buyer and you got to be careful of when you lift it. So with all that said, Daniel, what kind of content should we be creating where we’re not telling the buyer that change is easy? What we’re going to do essentially, I guess is, tell the buyer that change with us, now you’ve invested with us so far is easy, but change to goes to someone else, a competitor, that’s going to be even more painful and you don’t even want to investigate that. You want to just keep going down our own sales process, our own sales funnel. I know I’ve just thrown a lot at you there, but is there any content that we can create to upsell, at scale, I guess, via content marketing and via social selling?
Daniel Disney:
There is, and the key to it comes to storytelling, which is the skill salespeople tend to have, or should be investing in. And there’s lots of storytelling sales courses out there separate to LinkedIn and Social Selling that you would do over the phone or via email. With LinkedIn, it’s bringing storytelling and mixing it with creativity to find ways to share the things you do, to share some of those principles around the dangers or risks of going to a competitor without doing it directly. So it’s finding ways to creating engaging content, or share stories, to help your customers see what you do and understand how simple it can be, how easy it can be, the benefits, the ROIs, et cetera, without directly telling them.
Daniel Disney:
And in terms of how you do that, there’s just so many different ways. It could be through connecting it to a TV show, or a film that’s come out. And finding a way, I mean, I saw someone do this with the Floyd Mayweather, Logan Paul fight, here are lessons relevant to the industry, connected to that fight. Totally separate subject, but what you do is you connect to people that probably watched that fight or had an interest in it, and then whilst they’re reading it, they’re learning about these things that you do in a kind of subliminal, but not aggressive subliminal way.
Will Barron:
Sure. There’s a great book on that very topic of taking the news and turning it into content, called news hacking. It’s super old, it was written in the 90’s I think, but that’s a great resource on that front. And I’ll ask you in a second of any resources or structures to build stories, but one thing that I find salespeople who are slightly missing the mark on social tend to do, is that they make themselves the hero as opposed to the customer the hero in their stories.
Daniel’s Recommended Resources on How to Craft Better Sales Stories · [11:00]
Will Barron:
Which makes sense because we’re all egocentric, we’re all focusing on ourselves, it seems like a good idea to say, “Hey, I went this account, I did this, and I got their revenue up by 200%,” or whatever it was. “I cut costs, I saved them this pain, this litigation, this stress.” Whereas what the buyer wants to see is, people who were in their marketplace, their peers, you went in with a guide, but the actual individuals within the account, in the account itself, was the hero. So other than that, which is super high level, probably didn’t help people that much as a story structure, have you read any books? Have you read any guides on building stories that you think would be useful for the audience?
Daniel Disney:
Similar to you, Will, I am terrible with names, so I can’t remember. I think it’s Mick Adam wrote a book about storytelling specifically for sales. It’s a great book. He puts out a lot of great content, but what I liked about it is it was storytelling, focused on sales, which is so applicable to LinkedIn. All it encourages you to do is to tap in and understand how to tell good stories, doesn’t matter where, which format you do that in. It’s not designed for LinkedIn directly, but it’s so transferable, so that’s probably one of my favourites. The other one I’ll mention, it’s not a book about storytelling, but it’s a book called, The Extremely Successful Salesman’s Club, by Chris Murray. And simply because it is a beautiful story about sales, so reading it helps you understand how you can wrap something that perhaps wouldn’t be in a story in a story.
Will Barron:
For sure. I’ll link to some of the books in the show notes as well, that kind of go along these lines. You probably need to read one or two of them, or even better, is a better solution for this to follow yourself, Daniel, and then just copy your stories with a different context and different heroes? Should we model success so as opposed to go deep into the trenches and try and reinvent it, or create it from other people’s structures?
Daniel Disney:
As much as I’m fully happy for people to follow what I do, what I would also recommend, on top of that, is follow key people in your industry. There will be people in your space, selling your products or services, or similar ones, and have a look at what they’re doing, because they’re going to be doing it a lot more relevant to your customers.
The Benefits of Constantly Nurturing Long-term Buyer Relationships · [12:38]
Will Barron:
Sure. Okay. Is there anything, I feel this is quite of a short episode, Daniel. Is there anything we need to add on this? Because I feel this is a short episode, we’ve been to the point, but it’s still, I don’t think we’ve dropped the hammer just how like important this is for the audience.
“The value you give your prospects and customers on a long term basis determines the success of that long term relationship.” – Daniel Disney · [13:03]
Daniel Disney:
I think one of the key points we haven’t really touched upon, but is really important to focus on, is value. And that word is thrown around a lot of sales and social selling, but value is important. The value you give your prospects and customers on a long term basis determines the success of that long term relationship. So we can dig a little bit now into what value means, but that has to be a core focus of everything you do. So from the moment they sign on the dotted line, make sure you’re connected on LinkedIn with them in the first place, then make sure you are sharing content that’s going to be valuable to them. We talked about the various split, either way, make sure whatever content you share, they’re going to get some value from. Maybe that’s an insight into you and your journeys, they get to feel like they’re following your process. Whether it’s a story, insight, knowledge, whether you’re getting experts in that are going to benefit them, all these things, that’s giving value.
Daniel Disney:
When you do that on a regular basis, then match that with engaging in their content. If they’re sharing content, like and comment on every other post, don’t be too stalker-y and do every single post, but like and comment on it. It’s going to make them feel good. And it’s not only maintaining, but building and strengthening that relationship, so giving value through your content and engagement is a real big part of nurturing those long term relationships.
Will Barron:
Okay. So let’s dive into the topic of value, because this is a topic in its own right. For someone who’s just bought, the data suggests that the biggest thing, the most value you can give to them at that moment, is to reduce any buyer remorse. Especially within a large B2B account where perhaps one person has made the final decision on the back of multiple other people, nobody wants to look like a complete idiot if it all falls apart, so you really need to emphasise next steps. You’re going to do this directly as opposed to social, but we’ll come on to social a second. You want to emphasise next steps, make sure that everyone is on board with the process, and you want to report back as soon as you can, data on success, even if it’s just, “Hey, the software is now set up, your users are in the account,” whatever it is. You want to report back success as quick as possible to reduce this window in this moment of potential buyer’s remorse.
Will Barron:
And this goes back to this analogy of, you’ve got this big rock and you want to keep it on top of your customer, and I guess the rock at this point is a big rock value that you’ve delivered, and as soon as you start to lift it up, because you want to upsell them, you want to do a price increase, you want to do whatever, there’s the opportunity for them to go to a competitor. So you want to increase the rock that’s on top of them to keep them held in place, and make them satisfied with what they’ve bought.
Adding Value and Dealing with Buyer’s Remorse Directly and Indirectly Within 30 Days of Purchasing · [15:58]
Will Barron:
So with that said, how can we do that with social media and our contact in social? It seems like one opportunity is to post customer success stories, and almost have like once or twice a month, a seven day success story of someone goes from buy to success. And that obviously has to be relevant, it has to be a real testimonial case story, that’s probably the hardest bit, to uncover those testimonials and get that written down and documented. But it seems like that is a starting point. Is there any other way, or a better question perhaps is, what else do buyers want in that window of purchase to 30 days? What value do they want that we can provide them, at scale, over social media?
Daniel Disney:
I guess there’s two types of value, direct and indirect. The indirect, is, as you say, Will, is the content, it’s the sharing customer success. And again, don’t forget there’s other additional bits of value you can deliver indirectly. So it could be, maybe once a week, you interview an expert and they’re going to be able to watch it, read it, consume it and gain insights they can go and use. That’s value.
Daniel Disney:
If you are working in sales, you get a sales author on, or you send them to sales leaders, you get a sales author on who’s sharing some of their top tips. As a customer, I’m getting additional value to the products or service you’ve sold me, so that’s great, that’s indirect value. And again, that whole engagement interaction on LinkedIn pieces, indirect value that you give.
Daniel Disney:
If we look at the direct value, don’t forget LinkedIn is a communication platform as well. So if you want to give them updates, or check up, you don’t just have a phone, you don’t just have an email. Why not ping them a video message on LinkedIn? Why not ping them an audio message? Or a written message? There are all these additional ways you can use it from a direct communication perspective to deliver value. It could be a video message, “Hey, we just want to let you know, we’ve got all your customers logged into the system now. Here are going to be the next steps.” Quick 30 second, 60 second video that they might consume, which they’re going to get value from because it’s interactive, but it’s still that direct communication.
Will Barron:
I think we can get… We’ve gone from a short episode to a seven hour one now. I think we can get even more practical with this, if you have an account sign up and you’ve got a good relationship with them, you can probably ask them once a week, “Hey, what’s the biggest problem?” Or once every three days, “What’s the biggest problem you have right now? What’s the biggest problem you have right now?” As perhaps the decision maker signs the contracts, there was this issue with the contract, so was this problem, there was this, document it. Then seven days later, our team, they’re not so motivated to get on the product. We know that when we get them on there, they’re going to do great, document that. 14 days later, our team are using the product, the end users, we’re starting to see some benefits and now we’re starting to get some motivation, but we found this, this and this.
Will Barron:
And we’re not talking about product issues that would go to a product manager to get engineers to fix. What we’re looking for is where we can create micro bits of content that might not be appropriate for you to ring up every three days and pester someone, but you could easily ping them a message on LinkedIn and say, “Hey, at this point, seven days after people sign up, people typically have one or two of these issues. Here’s a quick video that solves these issues for you.”
Will Barron:
And it might be something that you don’t want to clutter someone’s inbox with, and you don’t want it to be an automated marketing like message, we’ve all been through them, we have to click through the guide, and go through all this nonsense, when really we just want to get into the product itself. We can personalise it. We can do it from the competitive advantages that sales people have, in which case it is personalised and customised to an individual. And especially if we’ve just sold to them, we’ve built that relationship, we perhaps got some more context that a marketing team doesn’t have.
The Advantages of Maintaining Relevant Communication with Your Customer Throughout the Duration of the Relationship · [19:01]
Will Barron:
I feel like that framework, of just even a message once every three weeks until we see that first bit of results. In which case we want to formally document that, an email so that the buyer can then share that internally, so they look great in front of their colleagues, that we make them look like the hero. But informally, if we just ask a few of our customers, as they’re going through this journey, we can perhaps collect data that gives us a reason to reach out, as opposed to, “Hey, I just thinking of you,” and just time sucking calls and emails and texts like that. I feel like if we do this once or twice, we’ve probably got a really good framework to reach out over social over the next 30/60/90 days.
Daniel Disney:
Really do, I mean, it’s genius, Will, but again, it’s understanding some people are either more likely to respond, or prefer to get communication via things like a video or an audio message. As you say, some people don’t have time to answer your calls, some people’s inboxes are absolutely jammed, and they’re going to miss those emails that you send them. But actually that little voice note that comes through, or that video message that comes through on LinkedIn, might capture their attention, and it’s that whole principle of actually communicating with them in the way that they prefer to be communicated with. And I guess the whole moral of this episode is, it’s deeper parts of LinkedIn and Social Selling that a lot of sales teams, salespeople, don’t think about. They kind of think, “I can only use LinkedIn for prospecting, so that’s all I’m going to use it for.” And there are so many more ways you can use it outside of different parts of the sales process, and it’s just realising it’s more the than a simple tool.
Buyer-Seller Communication Modes and Platforms Should be Based on Buyer Preferences · [20:33]
Will Barron:
Well, I’ve seen this, well, I don’t want to plug it, but I’ve seen this with our training product at Salesman.org. We’ve got a community in there, there’s tonnes of people chatting, going back and forth every day. Regularly, I’ll get people message me on LinkedIn, because they know that I’m crappy at replying on email, it’s common knowledge of email me, I’ll probably get back to you in a month. But they drop me a message on LinkedIn, and as soon as I recognise their name, as a customer of mine, a part of the community, I’ll respond immediately on LinkedIn. And there’s perhaps questions that they don’t want to ask in the community, but they want to ask me personally. And maybe they just like LinkedIn as opposed to our platform, because they’re logged in it all day, they don’t want to log into another piece of software. So you’re right, we’ve got to flex our communication platforms for where our customers want to communicate. And that in itself, even if it’s the same communication that we’re doing, that’s an extra layer of value that we can offer these people as well.
Daniel Disney:
100%, Will, 100%, and that is it, going back to the whole value bit. It’s mirroring what your customers want, whether it’s in the content, whether it’s in the way you communicate, and LinkedIn creates all these opportunities. So as soon as you’ve got that customer, LinkedIn doesn’t stop, there are so many ways you can use it to just communicate, beyond the phone and email. You can give value through the content you shared by engaging in their content, and all these things are going to help nurture, grow and make these relationships stronger, longer lasting. And LinkedIn’s continually growing, so more and more people are using it, for more and more hours per day, so it’s becoming a big part of not just prospecting, but beyond the sale as well.
Will Barron:
For sure. Okay. Well, we’ll wrap things up with that. That is Daniel Disney, King of Social Selling. My name is Will Barron, I’m the founder over at Salesman.org. And with that, we’ll speak with you next week on the Social Selling Show.
Daniel Disney:
See you next time.
