SNM212: Winning at Selling with Ian Moyse

Or your expertise to sales. You're really good at that. I'd be interested in that for me personally, because I've been doing phone calls all week. And that's the thing is that for a lot of us, when I got an online business, I was like, I never have to talk to other human again. I can just live on my base and make money. Then you realize it's 90% of my revenues, handshakes or friendships. And now to grow my business, I'm doing phone sales again. And it's this hurdle.

I watched the person, the person nodding, but I said, every day I will get things such as a LinkedIn connection that will say something like saw your podcast on this, saw your video on this, saw you won this award, whatever it is, I'd really value connecting. So, I can see your content. That's valid, authentic. Great. Okay. As soon as you let them in that door, you know where I'm going, right? Oh, there's the InMail with a sales pitch. There it is.

There is because they've got this perception that digital is different to real world, right? You would not in the traditional real world, turn up at an event and over pouring coffee or getting coffee from the machine saying oh morning, how'd you get? Oh, the traffic was bad. Great. So anyway, let me sound here, but that's what you're doing electronically. People's behavior digitally is out of kilter. There's several things going on. I think one is. Activity is being confused for productivity.

So, I read 40 emails to InMails today, and I've done, oh, I feel really busy, but it doesn't work. It's not working for you. And lots of activity. It's the wrong activity. Number one and two, what you're doing is communication, not conversation. Conversation is something like this, where you can see a reflection. And Jonathan, if I start saying this, you'd get inflection right of, oh, hang on a minute. I pissed him off here. He's angry or whatever.

If I do that on email, you can either interpret that I'm angry when I'm not really angry, but I'm just frustrated. It's easy on the keyboard or vice versa. I'm not coming across that way, but actually I'm really disappointed. You can't tell. And I think that's a big conversation right now with what's happened with COVID, you can't get hold of people as easy, right?

Because unless you've already got their number, what you gonna do, phone their business and they can't transfer you because they go they're at home. I'm not, I can't put you through. I'll take a message. So, it's harder to get hold of people in the sales environment prospecting today, because the default is it's easy to send an email.

Picking the email of some database or to send a LinkedIn message, or a social message, but there's a skill in doing that and people are misusing it and they're not getting the results. So, they're doing it more. If I get any more messages saying, did you miss my last message of the last message over the last message is the fifth one where they've said, just want to make sure you haven't missed out on that opportunity. I haven't missed out. I'm just blocking you because you're pestering me.

So, I think there's a whole subject around that. We can talk about that.

So, I have tons of connections to people and I have a really well-written profile cause he jazzed it up for me, but I'm not active on LinkedIn. I'm not good at it. The marketing messages are so unnatural to me. I've only reached out to one or two people the same way we first met, like I do cold outreach and it's the same thing. I only send three emails maximum if you don't reply to the third email, that's it. And that's because if you email me three times, there's a very good chance I miss it.

But on LinkedIn, the alert never goes away. So, it feels different to me. I get these messages they're like sales letters, they have formatting and images and all this jazz. And I'm like, I don't get it. Like sometimes I get a cold email that goes hey Jonathan, we saw you wrote a book. You need to learn how to make courses. And I was like that's my expertise. So, I know you've never been to my website. That's literally the thing I'm most well-known for.

It's if someone cold email to you and says, look, we're going to teach you how to do phone sales.

You're trying to sell me. It's the most ironic thing. You can't be good at what you're trying to sell me. Could you just prove that, by the fact you reached to me? Yeah, I get it all the time. And people have moved off email to LinkedIn and think they can do the same behavior. It stopped working on email. Why do you think you can just move shift platform and do the same thing? It doesn't work.

That's like the one friend who's still using MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger. It's oh, now I got to keep that app just for you. Like it's every once in a while, I get someone who still has an AOL email address and I'm like, wow, like you're dedicated. Like they're like, I don't like change, and that's why I have it, but I'm wondering what's the right way. So, I have a couple of questions about LinkedIn, because that very much interests me. What's the right way to message someone.

So, my approach, as is if I want to approach someone to be on a summit or to book event with me, I look for their existing content and their area of expertise. And I go, my name is Jonathan. I'm the bestselling author of this book. And I want my audience to hear your voice. This is why like your book or this is why like your content or this is why it might be interesting. And I look for people that are good at stuff that I'm not good at.

So, that's why I have lots of LinkedIn experts, or I have lots of other phone experts because I'm not good at that. Or anyone who does, e-commerce not my area of expertise or anything physical. So, I reach out to people like that. And we're always looking at what's our response, right? So anytime there's wants rates lower, I look at the email and see if something went wrong. Like we just did approach for a client, and he was like, make sure you include the link to my website.

And he was like, there's other speakers that are going to be at this event. And I was like, I recognize one of them. He's been dead for five years. If someone notices that it's going to kill your credibility. It turns out I'm wrong because he had a picture of someone else who's been dead for over a hundred years. So, one of the people emailed me back and I felt horrible. I was really excited to participate your event, but you have someone who's been dead for a hundred years.

And I told the client, I was like, you got to erase his picture because no one is going to believe that. I didn't realize he had found a picture of someone who's dead since before the internet, maybe even before the steam engine, but there's this idea that we have to establish credibility when really my approach was always. I want to give value to you. So sometimes you do the thing where you, like a post or leave a comment first to soften the ground. And I wonder if there's on LinkedIn.

Cause I feel like everyone on LinkedIn is like wearing a suit. That's why I've always imagining in my head that it's like James Bond. If you imagine, if you walked into a bar in a tuxedo and you're the only one wearing it, like everyone would be staring at you, but on LinkedIn, that's my imagination. So, I wonder what is the right way to form a connection. Is there a process for looking at the type of person you want to work with?

So, triggers are looking for things like where someone posts a bit of content that you authentically can comment on. I talk about cloud computing and there's areas, which I have expertise in, but if someone posts something about latest accounting practice, I can't authentically comment. I'd have to go and look up what to say. Don't fake it.

But if there's something I can authentically comment on, whether you disagree, agree, or could add something to it, people notice it because they'll see a trigger that you will get an alert saying they comment it. And if it's something sensible. So, I have made lots of major connections over time, and there's a variety of ways, right? One is you have to like posts and to comment and to interact and to post something relevant and tag them into your posts.

If someone talks on there about, let's say social selling and I've written a blog on a different view on social something, I'll tag them in because I know it's there something they talk about. So, it prompts them in their feed. There's an article. They look at it and they might share it by nurturing that and not trying to take a shortcut. And that's what people do. They'll go like a post, like I'll go on there, like 50 posts of someone and then blast them with no, you haven't earned the right.

You have to nurture it. And this is why people don't like this method and why they get it wrong. Fundamentally real basic is they haven't got the patience. People want instant gratification. I want to see that person that's who I'm going to sell to. And now we'll have a conversation today, right? If you can pick up the phone or absolutely find a way to get that conversation that will work absolutely supporter. Don't take the long road, but what do you do when that doesn't work?

Which in the majority of cases, it doesn't? What they do is they do lots of activity. I'll bombard them or send them three messages this week about it, and then another one and another one. And you know what? Their wall goes up even more. Whereas my technique will be, yeah, I'll try and find a short method, not tell you a couple of other ways in a second, but if I can't find one, I can't find a genuine, authentic way that'll shorten the process.

I'll treat that as one of the ones I'm going to need to nurture and the right. And I'd tell you what, when you get someone that you want to speak to follow you back of their own volition, or post something back and tag you in, they're starting to open that door that yes, you could reach out, right? Because you've earned the right. And they've said, by following you, I like what you do. And I'll go, I've had many people reach out to me in the past.

Actually, I'm coming to London, book authors and stuff like this. I'm coming to London. It feels I happen to be in London around this time. Would you meet, we'll have breakfast. Because they feel like they know me because I've spent so much interaction with them. It's become a natural progression.

So, I know lots of the big book authors on sales, and one of the big names in the industry, probably met eight of them, but not because I pestered them, whatever, because I earned the right, the other way of doing it is the people miss. And it's the beauty of LinkedIn. And I do it all the time. There's an author called Joanne Black and she talks about no more cold calling. What she means is it's not about not wanting to do an outreach. It's make it non-cold.

And I've done this so many times, did one recently. When I do cold calling of someone senior. First thing I'll do is try and figure out who they're connected to that I know. It's not rocket science, and I'll go through and I do this every time now looking for a job, I do the same and I've just had a call this evening with a VP of global sales. And I initially approached his CEO yesterday.

Rob just put your invite in CEO with a reference to a joint connection CEO replied saying, okay, I want to talk to you. He's coming to me this morning. I had someone who used to work for me, send him a message that he doesn't know I know, to say I believe you might be able to have a conversation with, and he's applied to you guys. Because what I'll do is I'll go through it and say, look, we got 20 shared connections there, which ones are my strongest? Oh, those three I'll ping all three of them.

Do you know this individual good enough to help me with this conversation I'm trying to have, and sometimes I get all three say not really? I can't remember where we linked. Sometimes one of them will come back say bloody hell. Yeah. I used to work with him, we went to college together, fantastic. Do you know what my conversation's going to be fairly quick? It's gonna be a cold call that's now a warm call because I'm going to get introduction. I've just bypassed everything, it's figuring out.

And I call it being Sherlock. It's finding the way in. The clues are usually there, but most people act like the Strahd, they miss them. They just don't see them. I spot them. I spot five things. You put me against another salesperson. I'm going to find five different angles of ways you might try and invoke a conversation that they'll miss, which is why they default back to what if they're going to sell something to you? And it doesn't work.

And casting a wider net because my offer it's I don't know if you're interested or not, because it's not B2B. Like the main thing I do is help people to write their book or build their first funnel or get their first custom audience. And so, if you message everyone at a company like, hey, are you thinking about quitting, thinking about starting your own thing, you try to work in there. That's who my ideal customer is.

Someone who has a job and is tired of it and wants to start their own business. It has to be like a softer approach because I can't send a direct mail because it will be funny. But if I was like, thinking of quitting, quit your boss, and then I accidentally, I sent the same message to their boss. Because also then I know they're a little bit interested, I know about having my profile jazzed up. So, it says, this is what I do, this is what I work with, but how do I stop?

Whether it's joining groups or sending out messages or posting content because everything on my LinkedIn feed makes no sense to me.

So, number one is create good content, any content you have the post schedule it. People get into this. I've seen this with companies that produce a great blog and I've advised companies on this. I see you've tweeted it. Yeah. I've posted it on LinkedIn, Twitter. I post that, right? Yeah. Once, you said it's a great piece of content. Yeah. That's like creating brilliant TV advert and you run it once. If it's the Superbowl, there's your exception.

But if it's not, you tell me you haven't seen the same TV advertisement multiple times. That's what you need to do on social. You schedule it, take the same piece of content I want to couldn't no, I couldn't do that because people will get fed up with it. In other words, they won't see it. Yeah. The chances, any individual is going to see it more than once or twice. It's pretty slim. Schedule it using something like Buffer.

And I schedule two weeks ahead and I'll say here's a good bit of content. It's a podcast we've done with something like this and I'll schedule it 20 times on LinkedIn, 20 times on Twitter over the next month. Different times, different days, even at weekends, because guess what people do bloody glances at the thing at different times. And it costs you nothing to do it. And no one's going to see it every time. So no, one's going to notice it.

So, every podcast I do or blog or anything, I create the template for it, with the link and the tags. And I just got this word doc. So, I can just cut and paste at any point into buffer, that one there dotted around, I've got images and videos to go with it. You just spread them out.

It's all the same video, different content, but because the video covers all of those things.

We've been together for eight years and I'm like, I may have never looked at your Facebook profile. Cause we live in the same room. Like I'm not looking at her feed. And so, if I'm not looking at her feed I'm certainly not looking at any of my friends or my own, now that will say that I have no idea what's on my Facebook. If I look at my profile, no idea it would be under the picture. So, that's really good because the pressure that we all feel, whether we're a beginner or advanced is like.

Oh, if you've got to tweet 20 times a day, and I do scheduling, but I always hear this thing. You have to perpetually create new content. You have to keep it rotating. And it's everything. I feel like the main social media approach, we all learn as the musket. You get to shoot each bullet once and you get better keep making more bullets. You spend more time making them.

It takes 10 minutes tops, put a few tiles on it. I've got a bit of content. So, it's creating new content, but it isn't about, you need to create three new pieces a month cause who the hell can do that. The other trick I learned is to create professional looking imagery and video. Very cheaply and I don't have the skills or I don't know how to use, forget the main packages people use, but with these graphic packages.

So, if you haven't come across it, it's two websites, Fiverr, and Five Squid, they both do the same, gig economy, websites. And I have posted so many videos over time. And if you look at my profiles and stuff, you'll see it regularly. There might be one saying how you cloud it, it's a fantastic animation flying through a computer with you into cloud and software's, so you want to learn about and this is the blog to follow. That costs me five bucks to get done on Fiverr.

All I did was gave him the text and what I wanted. So many on that and they produce these high production, amazing video clips that you can post on social. And I've had so many people reach out to me go and companies, oh my God, how'd you do that? We'd love to have something like that. Did you do it, or, so I feel disappointing sometimes to say it costs five quid. Because there's someone in Thailand or there is someone in the backend of nowhere, India, who knows how to do this stuff.

And to them, it's a good money and they're on this website and they're just do it, churning them out all day. They sat somewhere, just churning this stuff out cheaply. Anyone who got the skill you can go on, then you start at five pounds. Some of the gigs will be 40 pounds for a video cause it's hot, different than that's what they decided to charge. So, I do those all the time. I've got a lot, I've done about 400 gigs on there.

Now over the years, creating video content and imagery to make my brand look more professional, but I haven't done the work. It's cheaper to outsource it. And that gives you adverts. So, advertorials or videos, which grab people's attention when they're scrolling through of whoa, what's this, it's the MTV generation is grabbing that, is that advert. What's going to grab your attention when you're scrolling to stop and look at my piece of content. That's the game. That's all it is.

Or is it that I say message me? How do we turn it into a conversation with the right people?

So, initially I was on LinkedIn. I've now got profiles on all the major platforms. They all look consistent. So, if you look at any of my profiles, you'll know it's me. Even if you took the name out, you'd notice the same person's profile and I cross-link them all. I do everything I can to make it easy for you as the audience to find me, know what to interact with me for. So, if you're into archeology, you're going to immediately know I'm not the guy. If you're into Kyle computing, yeah.

This is the guy and I get myself into other areas anywhere there's anything where I can extend that personal brand, whether it be a podcast talking about it, whether it be doing a blog for someone. I write blogs sometimes, and then posts it. I find sites where you can post them, there's tech magazines for me, which will take my content.

So, I'm looking at, if I create a piece of content, how many places can I get that used and placed, ideally with backlinks to me, because I never know where my audience is going to go to find me. The other thing is lots of tricks I use and trying to get to the site. Now there's a site I use Tweak. So, what Tweak allows you to do? There's lots of tools you can use, and it doesn't necessarily fit for everyone. But Tweak allows you to create little batch jobs.

Okay just point and click on a menu item. So, for example, if I want to grow my followers like cloud content, cloud competing content, would it be sensible to issue if someone is following another cloud computing influencer, that would be part of my audiences. So, if you know someone like you, who's got the audience you want, you're not stealing their audience. What you're saying is I want that audience to like me as well.

So, it's a little bit like Netflix, because you watch these three programs. We think you'll like this one. So, what I want is that audience to go because you're following those people, you might like me. So, tweet for leisure, create that type of thing, because what it does, you can create a little batch job can put and click. We said, I'm going to pick these four people because their audience is the audience that my content would be interesting too.

And what it will do is it will follow their audience, right? You can set to follow automatically like content of their audience. It will do automatic triggering of people that are following them and you can D follow them. So, you can say, go and follow this this individual here. Their audience will probably will like my content. So, every day go and follow a hundred of the people that's following them.

And three days later, if they haven't followed me, I unfollow them, or you'll be surprised how many followers you get pick up. Cause it gives you a nice graph. So, I used to do this on my competitors. I set it to follow my competitive vendors followers. And over time I'd say, oh no, I've picked up 400 followers from their account because it will show you which ones that you did it to have that account now follows you. And it works.

It works because what it's doing by following them, a lot of them will then go, oh, and he just followed me. Oh, that's interesting. Oh no, all content I'm interested in. I'll follow them back. There's lots of little tricks you can do to do, which builds the audience, which over time is why I've got all the different followers on the different platforms. It's finding those. How do you automate this stuff within the rules that you can. Okay.

I'm not really active on any social media platform. I'm an email guy. I definitely see there's a lot of potential there. So, thank you so much for sharing so much. Where can people find you where's the best people to learn more about you?

But Jonathan Green, for example, or Paul Smith go on there and search that. How many are there? So, I picked up ages ago. Another little tip was why wouldn't I register my own domain it's so cheap. I now own it and I can point it anywhere I want. So, here's the thing. I always use that now in any content I post, I want ianmoyse.co.uk put in there, right.

That name roots people to my LinkedIn profile, which creates more traffic to my profile, which means LinkedIn's algorithms pick that up and promote it more searches and etc. Knock on effect. So that's where they find me and follow me.