Outcome Studio Podcast - Marketing & B2B Technology Talk - 018: Answering Questions for Buyers with LinkedIn Videos in IT and Telecom Financing with Seth Thompson

018: Answering Questions for Buyers with LinkedIn Videos in IT and Telecom Financing with Seth Thompson

04/03/19 • 64 min

Outcome Studio Podcast - Marketing & B2B Technology Talk

Importance of sales reps answering buyer questions, on video, and then distributing the video on LinkedIn to engage buyers in a way that builds trust and sets appointments over time. Show highlights:

07:00 - Seth Thompson's thoughts on majoring in communications studies. Also part of Powerlifting club. How University of Iowa and athletics made Seth the professional he is today. Valuing intellectual and physical strength and persistence. Not going to get quick wins because guaranteed results are never guaranteed. 13:00 - Idea of injury prevention in competitive fitness is similar to avoiding burn out in business. Doing the little, boring things right over time with discipline to get payoff. 16:00 - How Seth ended up in Sales. Why Seth enjoys customer facing. 21:00 - UCaaS (Unified Communications) as a service. Seth provides different ways for those that provide those services financial programs to help end customers to make purchases. SMB space is Device-as-a-Service, how do I have the latest and greatest and not go out of date. 26:00 - How Seth is acting as an advocate for his customers on LinkedIn. Using social media, not to sell customers but to educate them. Need to be using video because that's the trend to personalize to buyers. Answer questions in a non-biased way. You don't have to be an expert, just try to be helpful. 32:00 - Your personal branding content doesn't have to be perfect! Don't have to over-script, can't fear failure, it's okay to look away from the camera and sound dumb. Putting something out there imperfect is better than never putting anything at all. 36:00 - The internet didn't allow us to share video the same way. Sales people are so well suited in this new age of selling. 37:00 - Concern about not being an industry expert to not technobabble. How do you add value to a customer base without being technical in a technical industry? Seth says that you don't have to share groundbreaking stuff. Think of the top 10 questions your customers ask and "who is Seth?". Start asking questions. That's all you have to do and 80% of buyers will have the same questions. 42:00 - in 6 months you will start seeing return, Sales Navigator. You have to cold call and follow-up after sharing and engaging on LinkedIn. 45:20 - Seth's company wants him to get better at LinkedIn and supports him to do it. Takes it back to his business and makes a case. Virtual networking events. "LinkedIn is digital industry event our our time." 48:00 - Every lead you got at a tradeshow doesn't call you back, either...don't know how to do it without selling." I'm a person first, and then I happen to sell this, too. That buyer must believe in you first to buy from you. 50:00 - Company can take your tools, but they can't take your personal brand. 52:30 - Job hopping and documenting your story on LinkedIn. Protect career. 54:00 - Sales Leaders, you want these personal branding sales reps on your team because they will bring you customers. 55:00 - "I trust Aaron, he trusts his company, so therefore I trust his company." 56:00 - a lot of buyers aren't active on LinkedIn, and even if they are your still have to cold call and email. 57:00 - Final thoughts from Seth, driving the point home about being okay with failure and finding ways to help other professionals in personal development and their jobs.

Importance of sales reps answering buyer questions, on video, and then distributing the video on LinkedIn to engage buyers in a way that builds trust and sets appointments over time. Show highlights:

Previous Episode

017: Helping Buyers Access Valuable Marketing Content via Personalized Outbound with Blake Johnston

Show highlights:

05:30 - Blake's background, talking about how he did eCommerce around college and mastered it. Then took sales role and realized that he liked marketing just as much as sales. He loved the new customer part. He also describes why enterprise outside sales is a tough role when it comes to closing deals.
11:00 - B2B vs B2C, and why B2C marketing is harder. We take a quick sidebar into eCommerce affiliate marketing and why it's a good side project for any B2B marketer. We also talk about how B2C eCommerce is closer to Inside Sales because of the quicker time to close, but with eCommerce you can't hide if your efforts are working or not. The ad sped directly correlates to payments on the website or not.
14:50 - We discuss Inbound, outbound, and paid. What are the differences? Inbound - how do you know what to be writing about, what will be interesting to your buyers, and what will get traffic. Creating the content isn't enough because you have to get the traffic SEO. Inbound marketers also need to understand how to execute on conversion and high level strategies that get results. Typically, bringing this in-house requires writers and designers. Outbound - setting up Inside Sales, how do we set up cadence tools, and how do we get to our buyers, plus how to be leveraging marketing automation. Paid - this are is difficult to just dip your toe in because it's complex. Outbound View, Blake's company, does all three of these because even with a good engine going, companies need to diversify because a channel can quit working at any time. Paid efforts enhances inbound and outbound.
19:00 - Hiring internal marketing resources is hard, and every single marketing agency service is easily $1,000-2,000. Smaller business owners either have to figure it out on their own, or find the local "cheap guy" in the city to get some tactical results at a lower cost than the big agency.
21:00 - ADRs and SDRs - are they becoming a marketing function versus just appointment setters in 2019? Blake is seeing more ADRs rolling up to marketing, but really the ADRs and Inside teams simply need to belong in the group with the best nurturing and oversight. So whichever function can provide that gets the SDRs, which is organization-specific. Typically, there is no compensation plan for Inside Sales people to want to push a white paper, event, webinar, etc. The proposed fix: doing an ADR or Inside Sales rotation where Inside Sales is dedicated to marketing content promotion for entire month in a quarter. Personalized emails work better than email blasts.
27:40 - It's not groundbreaking that Inside Sales should help marketing promote content, but if there's not structure to do this it becomes everyone's part time job which isn't effective and not thoughtful. Instead, Blake argues that there needs to be a human caller dedicated to providing buyer value. They're not asking for meetings out of nowhere. They're doing soft call to action, not hard. This method is a good introduction to your company to entire strangers (individuals or departments in existing accounts).
29:30 - Account Based Marketing with personalized content promotion, use for new logos or account expansion. Soft to use the call to action as events or webinars.
33:00 - How do sales and marketing get aligned for ABM? It can get complex quickly. It requires a legitimate marketing plan for an account, but that won't happen without executive sponsorship.
34:00 - LinkedIn ads for targeted accounts. $10 per click is expensive, but it depends on what buyer level you're shooting for. You can pretty easily get to very specific people on LinkedIn. Consider Facebook and Instagram targeting for cheaper if you have a list to upload.
37:00 - We discuss free LinkedIn organic methods, and doing social sales cadences.
40:00 - Executives are getting more involved in sharing knowledge with the community (especially on Social and LinkedIn) because they have something unique to say versus their ADRs who are new and don't have an opinion yet. Blake says he does podcast interviews or guest blogging because it leads to sales and pipeline and ROI on his time invested.
43:00 - Closing remarks from Blake at Outbound View.

Next Episode

019: Value of Industry Expertise and Leveraging Video as a Sales Rep with Nathan Leary

Nathan Leary is an IT & Cybersecurity Sales Pro based in Austin, Texas. He is the host of Security + Brews Chat, which is a video series about actual IT problems. He has conversations with IT professionals over coffee, which positions him as an industry expert and a content creator. We discuss his early sales career, how he accidentally fell into IT (and loved it), and how he thinks about video, personal branding, and sales teaming with marketing to really add value to his buyers in the sales cycle.

Show highlights:

05:00 - Nathan selling Cutco knives as first sales job to haphazardly applying for SDR jobs after college, looking for a start up. Accidentally ended up in IT sales.
08:00 - How Nathan came to know and love cybersecurity without a background in it. He learned from talking to customers about their problems and listening.
13:00 - Starting the "Security and Brews Chat". Content in the sales process and include the personal branding piece. Nathan's goal is entertaining and valuable.
20:00 - Resources to get started with trending sales, marketing, and prospecting tactics like video. Find frameworks to make your content, then sales reps can plug and chug versus reinventing the wheel.
22:00 - How sales can approach marketing and brand managers to do bottoms-up messaging, versus waiting for it to trickle down. Nathan recommends Jake Dunlap for enabling sales to be digital brand ambassadors.
25:00 - find a company that lets you take an idea and run with it, especially as a sales rep if you're already taking content that marketing made and make it digestible.
28:00 - Frequency of posting content in 2019, don't dilute your message. How do you balance it with your job? It's okay not to scale your brand at a fast rate.