Latest / The Payments Shed / Ep. 58 - The New World of Thought Leadership & Social Selling in 2026: The Do’s and Don’ts with Tim Hughes

Transcript

Ep. 58 - The New World of Thought Leadership & Social Selling in 2026: The Do’s and Don’ts with Tim Hughes · The Payments Shed

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  Welcome to the Payment Shed Podcast, the weekly podcast that
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  dives into the big topics, trends and people shaping the
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  world's of payments, fintech and business leadership with your
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  two Co hosts, myself Grant Evans and Justin Hanna.
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  Welcome to another episode of the Payment Shed podcast.
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  Today we're joined by Tim Hughes, CEO and Co founder at
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  DLA Ignite and author of one of our favorite books, social
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  selling techniques to influence buyers and change makers.
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  Tim, please introduce yourself to us and tell us your
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  definition of social selling, please.
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  Thank you and thank you so much for letting me come on your
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  podcast and talk about my books. So my background, I've been in
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  sales for 35 years and discovered social media about 20
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  years ago. And I was told that social media
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  and the Internet was just a fad. It would never catch on.
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  And here we are, everybody's on social media, just as myself and
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  my business partner predicted. And it's still being used even
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  even in the world of AI, so even more so.
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  So, and you asked the question, the definition of social
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  selling. And I think this is really
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  important. So there's lots of people that
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  say they're social selling and they're not.
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  The definition of social selling as far as I'm concerned is using
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  your presence and behaviour on social media to build influence,
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  make connections, grow relationship and trust which
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  leads to conversation and commercial interaction.
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  What does that mean from a a figures point of view?
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  Using our benchmark, the average SDR, so the average sales
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  development representative is getting something like 5
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  meetings a week. And we have an AE at Salesforce
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  who gets more meetings than anybody else in the whole of
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  Europe, Middle East and Africa, and he's getting 7 meetings a
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  week. So that's the sort of benchmark
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  that people should be looking at.
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  And we know that there's no other business development
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  method that will get you that level of number of meetings.
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  Really interesting SO. The question for me on that,
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  Tim, there's, there's a lot of people that talk about demand
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  generation and and social selling and a lot of people came
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  to be experts in it. How do you guys think there's
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  been a shift from demand generation kind of towards
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  thought leadership in that way when it comes to kind of the way
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  you were looked and perceived online?
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  I think that if you look at the way things have changed over the
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  last 10 years, 10 years ago we were trying to justify the
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  people that actually use content.
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  And here we are. We're in a world where everybody
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  accepts that content and people going out and looking on the
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  Internet for information and for insights and to be educated.
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  That's the norm. Even though if you look at the
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  the latest reports from people like Sixth Sense, actually
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  buyers aren't looking for information because they
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  actually know the people already.
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  So we know that people are buying through relationship and
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  trust and that's where people should be leading rather than
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  some messaging which is the bland and the same as everybody
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  else. I love that.
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  I think and I always talk to to the businesses about it.
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  We spend a lot of businesses spend so much of their time
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  trying to sell to 90% of people that are not even looking to
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  buy. You should be constantly 2% of
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  people that are in market and they need to be thinking of you
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  when they go into market. Well, it's it's interesting with
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  social, you know, every if you posting something every day or
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  every week, what you're doing to people is basically waving,
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  saying here I am, this is what I do.
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  And if because the person knows you, you're in a situation where
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  you're, you know, just your front of mind, whereas you
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  couldn't cold call someone on a weekly or an hourly basis,
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  they'd block you. And so, you know, you're in a
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  situation where I, I, someone knows you, they like you and
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  they trust you. And know, while that's a cliche,
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  that is the way that that the world works.
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  The important bit is, is that if we're, if we're not connected to
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  somebody, then we are invisible. So there's a lot of people that
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  are putting out, I just looked at LinkedIn before I came in
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  here and a lot of it is just brochures and, and people
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  thinking that somehow or other if I put out a piece of content
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  that someone's going to read it and they're not, they're only
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  going to read it because they like you.
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  Carousels. They've had their moment in the
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  sun, haven't they? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  But I, I, I, I, I read your blog or I watch your podcast because
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  I like you. Yeah.
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  The only unique that anybody has in the world today is who they
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  are. Because if you look at every
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  single company, they go and go to market exactly the same way.
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  And having the best messaging and having the best brochure and
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  all of those things makes no matter at all, because what
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  we're doing is that we will buy from the person that we know,
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  like and trust. And do you think the term social
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  selling needs to be updated in 2026 potentially?
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  Like is it broader than that now?
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  I mean, I mean, I know it's a point in your mind for you, but
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  social selling was the original maybe version of going through
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  platforms like LinkedIn to do outbound, right?
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  No matter how you were doing it, but with the sort of growth of
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  thought leadership and demand generation like you talk around,
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  that feels multifaceted. That all feeds into social
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  selling. So maybe it needs to be
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  something broader these days. Yeah, we've done a, we've been
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  running the business now for a decade and we've tried all kinds
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  of things, you know, digital selling, so you know,
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  transformation and all of those things.
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  And The thing is, is that, that, that the, the category has been
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  named as social selling. And therefore, if you start up
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  with another name, you're, you're defining a new category,
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  which then means you've got a start up cost associated with
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  it. So we've always ended up going
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  back to social selling. The problem with the term social
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  selling is that people think that's selling on social.
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  And, and the issue with that is that is that they think that
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  that LinkedIn is some, is a, a, a sales platform and it's not,
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  it's a social, it's a social platform.
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  And therefore you have you, you know, it's back to the
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  relationship. I, I, I'm not interested in your
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  product. It doesn't matter how much you
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  post about it. And everybody goes to the market
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  and says exactly the same thing. Buy my product because we're
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  great. So, you know, my background is
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  just selling accounting systems and every, every single
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  accounting system company says exactly the same thing.
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  As a buyer, I cannot tell any of the, the products from each
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  other apart from the fact I know that Dave works at Oracle.
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  And Dave's a mate of mine said who am I going to phone up?
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  I'm going to phone up Dave Oracle and he'll be #1 on the,
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  the shortlist. And this is what the the 6th
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  Sense report and latest research shows that I will ring up Dave
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  and he'll be #1 I'll then find out that Steve works SAP.
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  And now, now Steve ultimately may win the business because I
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  might find that I can't do business with with Oracle.
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  But but the whole of the shortlist is being done based on
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  relationship, not on messaging brand or some piece of magic
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  that that that marketing have thought are.
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  It's so funny for me because there's this, there's two camps
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  with LinkedIn particularly, and we'll talk about LinkedIn quite
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  a lot today, I'm sure, because I know you're, you're very
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  prevalent there in terms of the clients you service as well and
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  ourselves. But there's people that hate the
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  fact it's gone more personal. Like the personal content
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  performs really, really well and it gets people to know you as
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  the individuals. And then I, oh, this isn't a
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  social media platform. Linkedin's, you know, Instagram
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  now it's Facebook now. I see it all the time.
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  But then from my point of view, I'm known as a, as a payments
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  and fintech leader. But people say to me like, oh,
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  look, you're the payments guy that that does all the running
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  or you're the guy with the crazy massive dog that I see.
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  Like you don't relate those things to me.
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  But they still know what I do in the sector that I work in.
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  But they can feel, I guess, like when I'm speaking to them, it's
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  almost like they know me more because they don't just know
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  that catalog, that brochure you talk about.
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  They don't meet the individual. So the only, the only thing
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  that's unique is you and therefore what you do and what
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  you say is again, is about you and what you're doing is that
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  you're building relationships. So you will get people on
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  LinkedIn saying this is, this is a Business Network.
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  It's not, it's a social network. And what we're doing is that we,
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  we're, the more that we know people, the more that we, the
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  more that we know like and trust them.
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  So a bit like what you were saying is that when we're, we're
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  posting about what we do. So if I post about my company I
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  will get 0 engagement and the reason for that is as soon as I
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  post about my company, if you drop a like on it, you will
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  expect me to ring you up and say so hello, you dropped a like on
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  my product so how many do you want in green?
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  Yeah, nobody does it. But when it's actually, you talk
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  about yourself and the fact that you're going scuba diving or
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  something like that, what people will drop likes on it because of
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  the fact that then you're you're not seen as being threatening.
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  Oh, it's interesting. Yeah, Steve, you're going out
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  diving or whatever. Now, once someone actually drops
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  a like or or makes a comment, what you're doing is that you're
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  building a digital bridge between your, your, your, the
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  seller and the buyer. You've got an opportunity if you
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  drop a like to basically say, hey, Steve, thanks for liking my
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  article about going snorkelling in the Maldives.
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  Why don't we have a call now? If I contacted you and said
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  thanks for dropping a like and this is a list of my products
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  and services, which one's going to get the meeting?
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  Yeah, absolutely. Do you know what's really
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  interesting in the role that I'm in now?
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  When I apply for the role, the first thing I got from my now
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  boss and he's hoping for me to say this, is that when he mess,
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  he messaged me on LinkedIn after I applied for the role and said
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  it'd be great to chat. Am I remembering right that
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  you've got an English bulldog? Never spoken to the person in my
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  life, but he is aware of who I am.
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  That builds credibility about ever speaking to somebody and
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  it's the same when it's customers because we're in an
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  industry where everybody says to have the best products, the best
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  price, exactly the best service we have.
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  No one ever goes to market and says my product is rubbish,
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  we're really expensive and the customer service is it's crap.
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  But people always say they have the best people, right?
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  Companies say we've got the best people.
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  Yeah, the only way everybody does.
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  Exactly. So if I know that a business has
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  got the best people, it's because I'm seeing them.
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  Yeah. Every single day and when I,
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  when we bought from sales loft, which I have two times already
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  now, the person I reached out to.
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  So I know that where the sales loft and I didn't know who they
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  were. And she was talking about sales
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  loft and I was like, I would buy.
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  She looks like she's good at her job, which the way she talks
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  about it, and I think I'll trust the product.
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  And so, so you've got this situation where every company
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  pretty much 100% are going to market and saying exactly the
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  same thing. We've got the best product,
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  we've got the best service, we've got the best people.
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  The only, therefore the only differentiation they have is the
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  people who work there and they're not putting them on
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  social, therefore they don't have that or the price.
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  Yeah. And so they're in this situation
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  where sales leaders must be, will be sitting there and sales
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  people are coming in saying, oh, the the competition have dropped
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  the price again. Well, of course they have,
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  because it's the only thing that you have as a lever to basically
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  win the deal. So, so, so companies are
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  basically cutting their own throats by marketing like we did
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  in 1980 and not realizing that the the world has changed and
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  that your people are actually your best asset.
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  I knew I was going to enjoy this podcast.
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  So in terms of buyer behaviour and, and it changing like, you
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  know, the, what has made this approach so much more effective
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  today because companies are still doing exactly what you're,
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  you're saying, right? But some of them aren't and they
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  seem to be the ones that are winning in market, right.
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  So there is is a fundamental shift in buyer behaviour around
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  this. Approach you see there are there
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  are relatively few organizations that are doing it right.
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  So what you'll find is that there are now if you go to
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  LinkedIn, I I was on there before I I came here and there's
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  a lot of people it's the beginning beginning of the year.
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  We're recording this in the end of January and there's loads of
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  people it's ourselves kick off OK who cares I don't probably
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  the buyers are actually looking at it and going I thought I
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  bought your product and you were going to put all the money in
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  investing it in development and here you are all shipping out
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  all the people to Las Vegas and, and look at all the the food
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  that you've wasted on the table. You know, Can you imagine the
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  people from Bangladesh and India that look at that and think that
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  is terrible waste, except you'd say that as a culture, you have
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  a great culture and we have a great inclusive culture in that.
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  But look at the waste of all that food and, and there's
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  people putting all this stuff out and then you ask them, so,
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  So what, what return do you get? Because if you do anything in
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  marketing, there has to be a return.
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  You know, if, if you give me a pound, I'm going to give you or
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  a dollar, I'm going, I'm going to give you what, $20.50
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  dollars, $100 back. And you people, you say, well,
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  we don't get, we don't get return.
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  What? So you're putting, you're doing
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  marketing and getting no return. So what you'll find is that
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  people are posting stuff on LinkedIn, but they actually
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  don't know how to harvest the engagement they're getting.
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  You know, this is more, you know, the likes and comments of
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  modern day prospecting. You don't need to make cold
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  calls. You don't need to send spam
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  emails. It's, it's people are active on
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  social media and it's the likes and comments, which is the, the,
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  the, the, the richness that you will actually start getting the
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  meetings and the, and the proposals, etcetera.
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  What are your thoughts on like Google ads spend you're?
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  Wasting your money. Yeah, I thought you might say.
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  That was a leading question. Wasn't it Nobody, nobody, nobody
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  looks at ads. Come on, nobody does.
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  And, and with AI, we've just got the ability to create even more
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  ads that we're just going to ignore.
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  Yeah, and people, people when they search things on Google
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  all, do you know what they're looking for?
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  They're not looking for ideas. Yeah, especially in the B2B
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  world. If I'm thinking I need to buy
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  from business, I'll go to Google because I can't remember the
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  full name or spell it correctly and I put it into Google.
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  I'm not going to wake up tomorrow morning and want to buy
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  from B to B business because I felt like it.
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  I already know that I want to be able to buy from them.
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  I've done my research already. I think some people just don't
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  think when we talk about content the way it's consumed, people
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  want to see people struggling alive.
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  It's just the way that we are wired.
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  We want to see storytelling, so it doesn't need to be this SK
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  was fantastic. Listen to our CEO talk about how
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  amazing she is going to be. What people want to see is the
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  journey of getting that SKO the last that you had as opposed to
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  a really corporate post behind the scenes kind of angle at what
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  it's like to be an employee, not to be ACEO because but.
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  But we, we all know that if I, if I place an ad, it will tell
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  me how great the product is. So I ignore it.
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  You know, it's a bit like you, you, you get people posting case
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  studies. Nobody reads case studies
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  because we all know that it's going to say how great the
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  product is. And it's the same with the, the
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  sales kick off. We all know, you know, and we
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  get all these people like liking it.
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  Oh, it was the best sales kick off ever, really.
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  But who was liking it? The employees right of.
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  Course he. Was reposting, of course, yeah.
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  Absolutely. So and and So what, what you'll
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  see when you you look in I mean we use this example a lot for in
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  presentations. Is that IBM, one of the world's
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  biggest companies? They have 300,000 employees,
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  they have 10 million followers on LinkedIn, but they only get
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  50 likes on a post. So that means the the the logic
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  therefore flows that actually nobody likes their content.
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  They're one of the biggest companies in the world.
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  I can get more likes and comments than IBM can.
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  Why is that? Because what they're doing is
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  that they're putting out more and more stuff that no one's
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  interested in. This is great.
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  I'm here's IBM, they're great. But if you go through anybody's
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  posts, what you'll find is that something about IBM, No, not
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  interested. Something about the people.
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  All of a sudden it'll be 200 likes.
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  Now when you look at the likes, you'll see that most of the
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  people are from IBM. Now, the fact that they could
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  only get 200 people of the 300,000 who work there to like
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  it. But what people are interested
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  in is that people that are interested in people.
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  If you sit in any room and we were doing a workshop the other
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  week where we got everybody to, to, to say something that nobody
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  knew about them. And one of them was a sales
• 16:29
  leader. And he was very sort of like my
• 16:32
  sales leader. And I don't like telling people
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  about things people don't. And, and, and, and, and what it
• 16:39
  was is that he worked in a Chinese restaurant when he was a
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  teenager and he knew the menu, all of so, so we got, we got
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  people shout a number out, 33 ah, chicken chow men.
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  That's like, and, and we were like shouting numbers out.
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  And he was saying, well, and, and, and that was the thing.
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  As soon as you actually talk about and have a human story,
• 16:58
  everybody in the room moved forward.
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  You could see the body language. We're all sitting there because
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  it was a a workshop. Tell us a story about yourself.
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  We all move forward and we do that digitally.
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  Yeah. Can we dive into then the last
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  couple of years on LinkedIn? This has been an ever, You know,
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  LinkedIn can be a cruel mistress and the algorithms are
• 17:18
  completely fluid, right? They change all the time, yes.
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  What would be your advice to people that feel that they've
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  got a really good formula working and then two months
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  later, there's no likes, there's no comments, Their reach has
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  declined rapidly. How do you stay on top of the
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  game as far as the algorithms? How do you find the right thing?
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  Talk to an organization that's done a load of research on it
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  and, and, and leave it and breathe it.
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  The, the, The thing is, is that what, what's LinkedIn?
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  LinkedIn is a commercial organization.
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  LinkedIn want people to come to the, to the platform and they
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  want people to come and interact with it.
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  What they're not looking for is people posting brochures.
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  So if you look at anybody who says my, my engagement has gone
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  down, yeah, because you're posting rubbish content.
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  And what, what LinkedIn has got has got better and better and
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  better at reading what the posts are.
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  You know, here's my brochure. Like who cares?
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  Oh look, 2 likes and the two people are your mate and your
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  mum. What a surprise.
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  So, so you've got this situation where you, you forget the
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  algorithm. Don't worry about the algorithm.
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  If you're doing the right thing, if you're providing insights, if
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  you're providing education, if you're providing entertainment,
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  then that's the right thing. I always tell people about one
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  guy that worked for us, the best post that he got where we got 5
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  meetings, 3 proposals was about Led Zeppelin.
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  OK, and everyone goes like it does.
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  It's always to say it always stops through Led Zeppelin on
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  LinkedIn. Wow, that's terrible.
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  It's, it's a, it should be about brochures.
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  No, it's not. It's about who they are and and
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  and by and, not by being and and.
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  If you're not a threat by trying to ram brochures down people's
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  throats, then you what you'll find is that people will step
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  forward and want to engage with you.
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  If someone was want to start using LinkedIn today kind of as
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  a genuine sales lever, where should they focus?
• 19:29
  Should kind of be on posting, should be in commenting, should
• 19:31
  be in DMS or kind of like damming people?
• 19:34
  Should be like consistency. So there's three things that you
• 19:37
  need to do on LinkedIn. The first thing is that you need
• 19:41
  to look interesting. So LinkedIn is a your shop
• 19:46
  window to the world. There's 1.2 billion people and
• 19:49
  they all walk past it, your witch shop window everyday.
• 19:52
  Do you want people to go that's a horrible salesperson or do you
• 19:57
  oh, that lesson looks interesting.
• 19:58
  I wonder if they could help me. So we've got clients that are
• 20:01
  doing multi $1,000,000 deals over LinkedIn purely because the
• 20:05
  buyers on social media they go, that person looks interesting.
• 20:08
  I know they're a salesperson, but I'll, I'll talk to them.
• 20:11
  There's then a conversation that takes place.
• 20:13
  Not on social, but on Zoom or, or Teams or face to face like
• 20:19
  this. And they're turning into multi
• 20:21
  $1,000,000 deals because they're looking interesting.
• 20:24
  So this is not about you, which is the mistake that sales sales
• 20:28
  people always make because we think that world revolves around
• 20:30
  us. It's about your buyer.
• 20:32
  So we talk about it being a buyer centric profile.
• 20:35
  How can you, how can you? How can I help you?
• 20:39
  And helping you isn't saying here's the order form.
• 20:42
  Helping you is, is if you sell payroll.
• 20:45
  So what are the issues, what are the business issues impacting
• 20:49
  people around payroll or HR, whatever.
• 20:52
  The second thing that you need is a network, because if you're
• 20:55
  not connected to the people that you're trying to influence,
• 20:58
  you're invisible. So you have to be connected to
• 21:01
  the people that you're trying to, to, to, to, to influence
• 21:04
  that. And, and also because people are
• 21:06
  quite snobby about if you want to sell high using LinkedIn,
• 21:10
  what people will do is that they won't connect with you if
• 21:13
  they're the CIO or the CFO, What they'll do is they'll look and
• 21:17
  see who you're connected. What are your, what are your
• 21:20
  mutual connections? Oh, he's connected to Steve and
• 21:24
  Dave in finance. And oh, he knows Mark Shaffer
• 21:28
  and Brian Saltz must be a interesting person if he knows
• 21:31
  all of those people. So it's about having an
• 21:34
  interesting network and being connected to the people.
• 21:37
  The third thing that you need is content and it's not brochures
• 21:40
  and case studies and photos of your sales kick off.
• 21:44
  It's about 3 things. 1 is about what is it that what is it that
• 21:49
  your ICP does and, and how you can help the industry that your
• 21:55
  ICP works in and you yourself as a human being.
• 22:00
  So the fact that you've got a big dog or you go snorkelling.
• 22:03
  Because what I'm looking for is when I buy something, I don't
• 22:07
  want a corporate robot. I'm looking for somebody that's
• 22:12
  got interests. And it's about how you can make
• 22:14
  yourself human. And those are the three things
• 22:16
  that you need and that that is the in effect the key to making
• 22:20
  LinkedIn work. How do you pivot that middle one
• 22:22
  if someone's got, you know, 5 to 10 Icps that they target?
• 22:29
  Well, that's not new. I cancelled the number of Icps
• 22:33
  when which I had when I started selling 30 years ago and I think
• 22:37
  I got to 10. And so as always with with an
• 22:42
  ICP, you need to sell to different people.
• 22:46
  We've actually now just created an AI teammate that actually
• 22:50
  makes that a whole lot better because what what it will do is
• 22:54
  it will the teammate basically explains which if you created
• 22:59
  some content which ICP that works best for, but from a
• 23:05
  selling perspective, you've got a it's cold calling is hard
• 23:09
  work. Selling on social is hard work.
• 23:11
  It's not an easy button. And a lot of people seem to
• 23:14
  think that they can come to social, press a button and or we
• 23:17
  can growth hack our way. No, you can't.
• 23:19
  You got to work. You've got to work hard just as
• 23:21
  much as anywhere else. Today's episode is sponsored by
• 23:24
  ISX Financial. Most growing businesses end up
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  with confidence. You can learn more at ISX dot
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  financial. That's ISX dot Financial and a
• 24:02
  big thank you to the team at ISX for supporting the show.
• 24:04
  And we want to talk about financial services specifically
• 24:09
  because this is obviously a fintech focused podcast first
• 24:12
  and foremost. So things still feel a little
• 24:15
  bit different in financial services.
• 24:17
  And my personal feeling on that is there's a little bit of
• 24:21
  censorship that still exists within large financial
• 24:24
  organizations that are stopping their people from putting them
• 24:27
  not not even the company choosing to put them out there.
• 24:29
  They're just stopping people doing it all together.
• 24:32
  Like, what is your advice to the financial services market as to
• 24:34
  why that's fundamentally not the right choice?
• 24:36
  The issue with financial services is that they think that
• 24:39
  LinkedIn or social selling or whatever it is, is about going
• 24:43
  out and talking about your products and services.
• 24:46
  And of course, because they're regulated, if I go out and say,
• 24:50
  hey, have I got a mortgage for you?
• 24:51
  And then find out there's a dodgy Commission thing on it
• 24:54
  and, you know, we get sued. Yeah.
• 24:57
  And the whole thing swings back in our face.
• 24:59
  What they don't realize that social is about the human being
• 25:02
  and. And it's about the, the, the,
• 25:05
  the, you know, what we talked about before about the human
• 25:08
  elements of, of, of social and what you need to be doing is
• 25:12
  that you need to be talking about the fact that you got a
• 25:15
  big dog or the fact that you go scuba diving.
• 25:18
  That's the thing that people are interested in.
• 25:20
  And they basically got to move the whole thing around and lead
• 25:23
  with with relationship and trust, which has always been the
• 25:27
  financial services sale rather than thinking the best messaging
• 25:31
  or the best product or when. Is there an innate fear that
• 25:34
  people are scared of the marketing and brand teams are
• 25:37
  ongoing now on LinkedIn and posting because they feel like
• 25:39
  someone's going to give them a slap on the wrists?
• 25:41
  I received a message a couple of years ago when I post on
• 25:43
  LinkedIn from from my boss actually at the time, I put a
• 25:46
  post and it does a swear word in it and I got a message saying we
• 25:50
  don't really like that. Now looking back when I post it,
• 25:53
  I question myself. So it's probably like, I should
• 25:55
  probably shouldn't have posted that, but actually it's a social
• 25:58
  platform. But is it really going to have
• 26:00
  an impact on what people think of the business you're working
• 26:03
  for? Is that what then gives people
• 26:04
  the fear of posts on LinkedIn that they're going to get kind
• 26:07
  of a team's message from someone in marketing?
• 26:10
  Yes, so, so most organizations have turned their brand into a
• 26:14
  prison. So what they've done is that
• 26:16
  they've that there are so many guidelines around the way that
• 26:19
  the what the brand has to do and the the logo has to appear here
• 26:23
  and and has to be a particular color.
• 26:25
  That what happens is that. So when I worked at Oracle,
• 26:28
  nobody posted on social because if you did, you got told off or
• 26:32
  fired. So you just didn't do it.
• 26:34
  It was just, it just became easier to do nothing.
• 26:37
  I think we. Still got that implant scenario
• 26:39
  in our sector there. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:40
  And most organisations, because they've turned their brand into
• 26:43
  a prison, that's exactly, you know, we all we all need to do
• 26:46
  is post tomorrow. Yeah, but yesterday you fired
• 26:50
  somebody. So why would I do that?
• 26:53
  So what we need to do is that we need to to, to the the second
• 26:56
  thing is that we need to train people how to use social media.
• 26:59
  So one of the things you do is you tell people not to use swear
• 27:02
  words. You know, you tell people not
• 27:05
  to, you know, here's you, don't you?
• 27:06
  Don't, you know, here's me at the betting shop, or here's me
• 27:09
  going in the pub, or here's me lying in the in the gutter on a
• 27:13
  Friday night holding a kebab. No, you don't post those things.
• 27:16
  Yeah. Now I know that some of that may
• 27:19
  be common sense, but for some people it isn't.
• 27:20
  So, you know, we've trained people on diversity and health
• 27:24
  and safety and, and all of these things.
• 27:26
  Why aren't we training people in 2026 on, on social media?
• 27:31
  Linkedin's been around for what, 25 years?
• 27:34
  X has been around for what, 20 years?
• 27:37
  I mean, it's not like this is new stuff.
• 27:40
  And we're about to be training people on AI get training people
• 27:43
  on social media. I agree.
• 27:46
  And so one of the one of the just just one of the things is
• 27:49
  that this isn't just about selling.
• 27:53
  This is, you know, your your your employees and your future
• 27:57
  employees are on social media. Your, your suppliers are on
• 28:01
  social media. Your future suppliers are your
• 28:03
  investors, your future investors, Everybody is on
• 28:06
  social media. This is about taking the whole
• 28:08
  of your culture, all of your people, and showing the people
• 28:12
  how great your company is. The culture.
• 28:14
  You know, you know, I had a company come to us and say, you
• 28:18
  know, we're really big investors in, in women.
• 28:20
  Yeah, but nobody knows that because you don't tell anybody
• 28:23
  about it, you know? So by telling people how to to
• 28:30
  be on social, what will happen is if you start getting the HR
• 28:34
  people on social, what will happen is that you'll start
• 28:37
  getting the best employees. Wouldn't you want to be?
• 28:40
  So not only are you getting the best leads, but you're also
• 28:43
  getting the best talent. You're also then getting the
• 28:45
  best suppliers because you're actually getting the best
• 28:50
  quality at the lowest price. So, so it's not just one piece
• 28:55
  in terms of of transformation from sales.
• 28:58
  It goes across the whole of the enterprise.
• 29:00
  This is where you see people that are not just in sales post
• 29:02
  on LinkedIn. Like to, to me, I love it
• 29:05
  because I'm seeing people in marketing, seeing people in
• 29:07
  product, I'm seeing Exco when they're on LinkedIn, I'm like, I
• 29:11
  trust that business a lot more than what I would have before.
• 29:13
  Yes, what what we did at Anaplan was we actually got the whole of
• 29:17
  the organization. We what so we got the marketing
• 29:20
  people to connect to, to the marketers in the target
• 29:23
  accounts. The the, the, the people from
• 29:25
  finance to connect to the people in finance in the target
• 29:29
  accounts. So, So what they're doing is
• 29:31
  that they're seeing and they're putting out proper human based
• 29:37
  content. This is my tomatoes I grew.
• 29:39
  This is the, this is my first apartment and I'm decorating it
• 29:44
  and stuff like that. Because they're putting out
• 29:47
  content that people are interested in.
• 29:50
  You're basically surrounding the whole of your target accounts
• 29:55
  with all the different people and who are they?
• 29:57
  They're just going to, you're going to go into a meeting and
• 29:59
  someone's going to say, have you seen those Anaplan people?
• 30:01
  They're great, aren't they? It's quite interesting for us
• 30:04
  because, you know, this is our, well, it's about fourth season.
• 30:07
  We're pushing into five seasons of the podcast now and we're
• 30:11
  dealing with a lot of marketing and PR people.
• 30:13
  And unfortunately we're getting approached now.
• 30:15
  But people wanting to come on the show and they will have a
• 30:17
  different reason as to why, but obviously they'll present
• 30:20
  certain individuals, which is gone from us reaching out to
• 30:23
  people now somewhat. We're being able to choose some
• 30:25
  of the guests that we get on, which is a nice position.
• 30:26
  But first thing we're going to do is go on the LinkedIn profile
• 30:29
  of that person. And again, if it looks like they
• 30:31
  have no presence and they haven't been on panels before,
• 30:34
  we've not seen how they speak or communicate or, you know, it's
• 30:38
  quite easy for us to see when someone does all of their
• 30:40
  posting for them as well. That can be like a red flag for
• 30:43
  us, just like what are we actually going to get from this
• 30:45
  episode for our audience? And that's been an interesting
• 30:48
  pivot, I think for us actually dealing with the marketing
• 30:50
  people. So if we talk about good social
• 30:53
  selling in and I'm sure you've got clients from the financial
• 30:55
  services ecosystem, what do you see is good social selling for
• 30:59
  someone in FS or Fintech as a as a sector at this moment in time?
• 31:03
  It, it's about focusing on, on the people and not focusing on
• 31:07
  the product. And that always has been
• 31:11
  difficult. It's, it's in, in, in tech, you
• 31:16
  know, SAS or something like that.
• 31:19
  People are generally happy to try something new.
• 31:23
  In financial services, it's always been difficult because
• 31:26
  people tend to be quite conservative.
• 31:30
  It tends to be very product focused.
• 31:36
  And you know, what we've seen is that, you know, that need to
• 31:39
  move away from and, and it's difficult to move away from the
• 31:44
  brand and see your employees as a brand or an extension of the
• 31:48
  brand. I think that's the way that
• 31:50
  they've kind of sold it internally, that our people are
• 31:53
  an extension of the brand rather than, you know, it's a Black
• 31:57
  Horse. There's reservations at C-Suite
• 32:00
  level, right from actively using social media as a platform.
• 32:05
  And then when you do go on, you see the guys that are doing
• 32:07
  really well actively on that every single day, talking about
• 32:10
  their growth. I've actually been reading this,
• 32:12
  this story of this guy who just bought some paddle courts and
• 32:16
  I'm not connected with him and I wasn't so, but I'm seeing his
• 32:19
  story. And for me, it was fascinating
• 32:21
  about how he thought, what is the ROI if I was to put two pad
• 32:24
  of cords into my gym and he's broken it down every single day.
• 32:28
  So when we talk about when you're going to need to be
• 32:30
  educated or to be entertained, I see a business owner talking
• 32:35
  about the real struggles and the good times of, of, of, of him
• 32:39
  installing the two pad of what's the cost?
• 32:41
  This is the electric, this is the groundwork that we have to
• 32:43
  pay for. It's really interesting.
• 32:45
  I'm not investing in his journey.
• 32:47
  Yeah. And I'm probably never going to
• 32:49
  buy from him, right? But if I was to ever wanted to
• 32:53
  build my 2 paracords, he would be the first person I would
• 32:56
  contact for some help. And when you look at the sea
• 32:59
  levels that maybe they're not as active on the platforms, do you
• 33:03
  think they should be used as part of their kind of commercial
• 33:06
  strategy? Yeah, of course they should.
• 33:08
  Yeah, it's it's it's back to this the everybody the the
• 33:14
  research shows that people want to work for people that are
• 33:17
  active on social. We want to see who you are a bit
• 33:20
  like when you said about the podcast guest, what we do, we do
• 33:23
  the first thing that we do is that we go and look people up.
• 33:26
  Career arc recently said that 96% of job hunters basically
• 33:31
  look the company up on social. I don't know what the other 4%
• 33:34
  do, but you know, we go and say, is this the company that I want
• 33:38
  to work for? Does it?
• 33:39
  And, and if we, you know, this isn't just about, you know, we
• 33:44
  do they have the purpose. Do they have the, are they
• 33:47
  making an impact? What, what, what did, what is it
• 33:50
  that they stand for? And, and senior leaders, not
• 33:53
  just the CEO, but the whole of the, the C-Suite need to be
• 33:57
  doing this. One of our clients, we always
• 34:01
  show the all the different people in the C-Suite on the
• 34:04
  slide. And then someone always says,
• 34:05
  yeah, but that's front to house. You know, you'd expect that.
• 34:08
  And then you go, yeah, but the CIO and the CFO is on social as
• 34:12
  well because the CIO is building relationships with people to
• 34:15
  say, hi, Steve, what, what cybersecurity have you got?
• 34:19
  Or the, the FD is on there going because they're, they're going
• 34:22
  for an IPO. It's like so and his job is to
• 34:26
  get funding to come into the organization.
• 34:28
  So, you know, they're using social not as a, as a, as A1
• 34:33
  dimensional piece, but as a A3 dimensional framework to allow
• 34:40
  them to achieve what they want to achieve by using the power of
• 34:45
  the network. It might, some of it may be done
• 34:47
  out. You know, this is what this is
• 34:49
  what we do and this is what we stand for.
• 34:51
  Other people are connecting to people are going.
• 34:53
  Can you help me with this? What are you doing?
• 34:56
  So there's some organizations you've gone into with that
• 34:58
  specific remit of we need our C-Suite to be more visible.
• 35:01
  And have you like other examples where you've hit real friction
• 35:04
  on that You've had to really work at the the C-Suite to get
• 35:07
  them finding their voice and, and their go to market.
• 35:09
  And then what have some of the success stories been as a result
• 35:12
  of finally breaking that barrier down?
• 35:14
  The, the, the, the difference about social is it's a change
• 35:18
  program. So when we started 10 years ago,
• 35:21
  the competition that we have no longer exists.
• 35:25
  And the reason for that is that we've out innovative them and
• 35:28
  the innovation is about that we understood that this is a change
• 35:31
  program. So we know that you will always
• 35:34
  get friction because you're teaching somebody something new.
• 35:38
  And so you're and, and quite often, you know, some of the
• 35:41
  things that there's there's unlearning to do classic is to
• 35:45
  that sales people. For example, if you connect to a
• 35:48
  buyer and you actually get a meeting and then you do, we've
• 35:52
  always been told from day one, do the alternative close when
• 35:56
  you get a meeting. So what you do is you say,
• 35:58
  should we meet next Tuesday or next Thursday?
• 36:00
  Because then the argument is about whether it's Tuesday or
• 36:02
  Thursday, not whether we have a meeting or not.
• 36:05
  And as soon as you do that, the buyer disappears because they
• 36:08
  know that you're a salesperson. Yeah.
• 36:10
  So there's unlearning to do. And the whole thing is a, is a
• 36:14
  change program, which means that you have to have to, to be
• 36:17
  successful in social, you have to have senior leadership buy
• 36:20
  in. You have to have somebody that's
• 36:23
  saying, OK, I am going to do this, I'm going to try that out.
• 36:27
  And then what you do is you make sure that the whole of the
• 36:30
  C-Suite do it as well. Because if you've got a
• 36:32
  salesperson sitting there and you're saying post something and
• 36:35
  they go, but my sales leader isn't doing it, why would I do
• 36:38
  it? My CEO isn't doing it.
• 36:40
  Why would I do it? Our teams probably can't say
• 36:42
  that to us, but it's it's interesting because I've got,
• 36:44
  you know, I'm trying to get my team at the moment to do this
• 36:46
  and one of the bits of advice I gave them a few weeks ago was
• 36:49
  just try a personal post, right? That is going down well at the
• 36:53
  end. Anyway, the two of the guys on
• 36:54
  my team have both done this, and one of them, as an example,
• 36:58
  25,000 impressions reached 15,000 members in seven days,
• 37:02
  right? That.
• 37:03
  That was like a 1000% uplift on the biggest post he'd ever had,
• 37:07
  right? Yeah, but we, we'll get calls
• 37:08
  from people. We got, we had a call from
• 37:10
  someone from Seismic who said on I'm posting corporate stuff and
• 37:14
  it's getting nothing, which is it's kind of ironic because they
• 37:17
  sell a social selling platform. But so we said put out something
• 37:22
  personal. So we put out something his his
• 37:24
  son's learning to be a a diver and all of a sudden within an
• 37:28
  hour it gets 250 likes. And he says that's amazing.
• 37:32
  And we said, well, that's what we told you.
• 37:34
  And he's gone back to posting corporate content.
• 37:38
  And was and again, you can put a lure in that personal post,
• 37:41
  right? Like you can trickle in elements
• 37:44
  of products or make it overlap with the industry that you want
• 37:47
  to talk about. So you.
• 37:48
  You. Can do, but I but you can do,
• 37:50
  but I wouldn't because it's, it's the it's a bit like the
• 37:54
  Tony Robbins. You go to a Tony Robbins event
• 37:57
  and, and, and it's free. And then he says, but if you
• 38:00
  really want the good stuff, you got to pay me $2000 and you, and
• 38:05
  you suddenly feel tricked. And then when you do the 2000,
• 38:07
  you now got to pay me $30,000. It's that, it's that where you
• 38:10
  feel tricked and you kind of, you know, I kind of want to wash
• 38:13
  my hands because it kind of feels a bit grubby.
• 38:16
  So, so remember, we're not interested in your products and
• 38:18
  service. We're interested in you.
• 38:21
  So if you go and you got a big dog, paint the post about big
• 38:24
  dog. Right.
• 38:25
  But remember, this is about the post, isn't it?
• 38:28
  The post isn't the point. It's the, the, the gold is in
• 38:32
  the engagement. Yeah.
• 38:34
  And and it's about what you do with harvesting engagement,
• 38:38
  because that is modern prospecting.
• 38:40
  You won't get any engagement on a brochure or a case study.
• 38:45
  It's the, it's the the big dog and, and, and you windsurfing
• 38:50
  where you're getting the engagement, that's where you do
• 38:52
  the prospect. But that's not just talking
• 38:54
  about putting personal content out there all the time, right?
• 38:56
  Because because sometimes you do want to talk about the
• 38:58
  challenges that your Icps are having, right?
• 39:00
  So I always have like 3 or 4 pillars.
• 39:02
  So every single time I put LinkedIn post I, it's about
• 39:05
  certain things, my personal life, leadership, sales,
• 39:09
  product, right? When I say product, it's, it's
• 39:12
  the product that it's not selling our product.
• 39:14
  It's talking about the challenges that my ICB is
• 39:16
  having. I think something we've done
• 39:18
  well in the last few years though as well.
• 39:20
  There's a fear about talking about your competition and
• 39:24
  particularly in a positive way, right?
• 39:27
  But you can talk more broadly about your industry and good
• 39:29
  success stories. And I think we've been very open
• 39:32
  with like the like generic advice around like this is how
• 39:36
  this bit of payments work. This is how this bit of
• 39:38
  financial, you know, infrastructure works, right?
• 39:40
  It was said to us like you're giving away so much advice and
• 39:42
  you're doing it for for free. We've given away the whole of
• 39:45
  the. Company, but it comes full
• 39:47
  circle, right, because then ten months later you get a message
• 39:49
  and someone saved a post about a problem they were having or
• 39:52
  they've saved, but it said like, Oh no, it's it's it's refreshing
• 39:55
  how you you know, you say you guys maybe aren't the best at
• 39:58
  that or this is a good example of something in the industry
• 40:00
  working well. That has actually been eye
• 40:03
  opening for me because it's not, you're not just ramming the same
• 40:06
  company that I think you're talking about an industry more
• 40:07
  broadly and saying these guys are doing this well, we're doing
• 40:09
  this well maybe, but totally. Agree.
• 40:11
  You know what I said earlier that you need to talk about you
• 40:14
  need to talk about your ICP, what their their, their issues
• 40:16
  are. You need to talk about the
• 40:18
  industry and what their their issues are and you need to talk
• 40:20
  about yourself as in my. Issues are.
• 40:26
  And, and, and, and, and, and when you talk about those things
• 40:29
  as part of the industry, and that's not just regurgitating
• 40:33
  Harvard Business Review articles, you know, about
• 40:36
  probably, you know, there's probably about 10,000 people do
• 40:39
  that. So it's not original what we're
• 40:41
  looking for. You know, when I, I remember I
• 40:44
  got a meeting with the finance director of Vodafone and I went
• 40:48
  and I, and, and, and I went and I did loads of background work
• 40:51
  because I didn't know anything about telco.
• 40:53
  So I did loads of background work about telco and, and in
• 40:56
  those days you could ask the finance director.
• 40:58
  So what keeps you awake at night?
• 41:00
  And, and, and he said it was a, it was a he and he said we've
• 41:06
  got 1500 shops and above every shop is a flat and each of those
• 41:12
  flats has a dripping tap. That's what keeps me awake at
• 41:16
  night. Now, that's not what you would
• 41:19
  have thought, but it you, you know, you don't need to mention
• 41:21
  the name of the person. You don't need to mention it was
• 41:24
  Vodafone. You can wait three weeks until
• 41:26
  after the meeting, but it would have been at the time, it would
• 41:28
  have been really interesting to say that this is what's keeping
• 41:32
  awake Telco, the, the, the finance director.
• 41:36
  You know that because that's not what people would expect.
• 41:39
  And what it is, it's insight, it's educational and, and, and
• 41:43
  that's the sort of thing that people are looking for.
• 41:44
  And I agree with you. What we do, you know, you, we
• 41:47
  all do it. We go Lipton and we go boring,
• 41:49
  boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring.
• 41:51
  Oh, that's Steve. What's Steve saying today?
• 41:53
  Now you remember that putting out, and I'm saying this again,
• 41:57
  remember putting out content doesn't not mean that anybody
• 42:00
  will read it. So, so I'm going to, I'm going
• 42:03
  to burst your bubble for a second and actually talk about
• 42:08
  impressions. The impressions are actually
• 42:11
  meaningless. All it means is that if I go
• 42:14
  like that on my on my profile and I don't even have to look at
• 42:18
  the, the content that's whizzing by, each of those person has has
• 42:22
  got an impression. Yeah, an impression means that
• 42:26
  one pixel has loaded for 160th of a of a second.
• 42:32
  It's totally meaningless. What you need are the likes and
• 42:35
  the comments. That's where the the the action
• 42:37
  is. Because as I said earlier on,
• 42:39
  this is where people are digit saying I have a digital
• 42:43
  resonance with your post. Yeah, I think, I think you know,
• 42:49
  when when the person posted about Led Zeppelin, they asked
• 42:52
  what's your favorite Led Zeppelin song and and there was
• 42:58
  comments when the levee breaks all whole lot of love Kashmir,
• 43:03
  which is mine, you know, and then what they do is that they
• 43:06
  got an ability to go back and have a conversation about that.
• 43:10
  Yeah. But I do agree on the contents
• 43:12
  and the engagement. I think I like the to look at
• 43:13
  the members reached statistics. I kind of think that showing the
• 43:17
  audience that's being that that your content is actually being
• 43:21
  pushed to by the algorithm to a degree.
• 43:23
  It is, but remember that this is just magic.
• 43:28
  Yeah, this isn't real. You can't take it to the bank.
• 43:32
  Your network may be in the wrong place.
• 43:35
  What you're doing is because what what what everybody does is
• 43:39
  that they make this assumption, right?
• 43:40
  Whether it's an impression or ever.
• 43:42
  I've made the assumption that I've written this blog and it's
• 43:46
  amazing, right? Well, you're not the judge of
• 43:49
  whether a Blogger is amazing or not.
• 43:50
  Your audience and your contacts are.
• 43:52
  I've written loads of amazing blogs that have disappeared and
• 43:56
  they're gathering digital dust somewhere, right?
• 43:59
  What we assume is that we've written this amazing blog, we've
• 44:02
  put it on LinkedIn, all these people have read it, consumed
• 44:06
  it, thought it was amazing, remembered with a payment shed,
• 44:10
  and they've stored that away in their head.
• 44:12
  It's an utter fallacy. Yeah.
• 44:15
  The only way that you know that somebody is connected with it if
• 44:19
  they're liking it and commenting on it, impressions and views,
• 44:22
  there's no name attached to it. What about like, with, with,
• 44:25
  with, with a like and a comment? You've got a name.
• 44:27
  Yeah, but. That's that's really interesting
• 44:29
  point because I've had and similar to you guys is that I've
• 44:31
  spoken to people, right and they've got love what you guys
• 44:35
  do on the payment show and they've never engaged with it.
• 44:38
  Yeah. So I've got that dark social
• 44:40
  element. Yeah.
• 44:41
  So, so we would we would expect generally for every like there's
• 44:46
  probably another 10 people out there that have read it that
• 44:49
  haven't liked it. Yeah.
• 44:50
  And that's this. We still have this fear that
• 44:55
  you're going to call me up and and I'm going to end up as a
• 44:57
  piece, piece of meat in ACRM. Yeah.
• 45:00
  And so we don't like it or people don't understand the way
• 45:04
  the digital works, which is actually no different from
• 45:07
  analogue, which is what we're having conversations, You know,
• 45:10
  you, you send someone Adm and you know, I, I went through at
• 45:15
  the beginning of the year, went through everybody IDMD in 2025
• 45:19
  and I sent them, wished them happy New Year.
• 45:23
  Off the back of that I got 6 meetings, 2 proposals and five
• 45:27
  people for my podcast. Now that worked it it beats
• 45:32
  sitting bloody cold calling doesn't.
• 45:33
  It for sure. So, but The thing is, is that
• 45:37
  that, you know, quite often, especially with those meetings,
• 45:41
  you know, you, you someone said something to you, either you
• 45:44
  lost it or you just said Happy New Year.
• 45:46
  And someone said, yeah, maybe we should have a conversation.
• 45:49
  Let's get on. I'll have a chat.
• 45:50
  So either the timing wasn't right or quite often, you know,
• 45:53
  it's like someone's DM me, Oh my God, what am I going to do?
• 45:56
  It's like, well, it's just like someone's walked up to you at a
• 45:59
  networking meeting and said have you travelled far?
• 46:02
  Very powerful, right? Quick fire round for you Tim.
• 46:05
  Biggest do and biggest don't on social selling in 2026.
• 46:10
  So the biggest do is be authentic.
• 46:15
  Be yourself. Yeah, this is about who you are.
• 46:19
  It's not about having the best messaging or, you know,
• 46:22
  everybody has the best messaging or the best.
• 46:25
  This is about being who you are. And the biggest don't is please
• 46:29
  stop posting all of this corporate stuff that nobody
• 46:33
  reads. I know marketing is telling you
• 46:36
  to do it, but what I usually say is just send marketing to me.
• 46:41
  If you have a problem, send marketing to me and I'll talk to
• 46:43
  them, right? Because you know, we've got
• 46:46
  everything that we do is based on data.
• 46:49
  So if you want to be a data-driven organization, I can
• 46:51
  walk you through the data about what content works and what
• 46:55
  content doesn't, what being on social works and what doesn't.
• 46:59
  And and lastly, are there any emerging trends that people
• 47:02
  should be preparing for? It would be a miss of me to say
• 47:07
  AI and I think that we've had a philosophical discussion in in,
• 47:14
  in internally, which we could do a whole of a podcast for in
• 47:19
  terms of so if someone is doing nothing on social at the moment
• 47:23
  and they use A and they and they become average, is that good?
• 47:27
  That's an open question because we've been debating it.
• 47:30
  So what half of our company think that's a bad thing because
• 47:33
  you shouldn't be average. You should be good or excellent.
• 47:36
  Half of the company think it's really good because actually,
• 47:42
  because people are doing, some are doing something rather than
• 47:44
  nothing. It's, it's, it's something to
• 47:47
  debate. And, and so we need to be
• 47:51
  thinking about how we use AI, that we don't just add a whole
• 47:55
  load of AI slop. We're not just creating stuff
• 47:58
  because you've got to remember that there's only so many
• 48:01
  articles that we can, we can read.
• 48:04
  So even if you can create 10,000 articles, I can only still read
• 48:07
  1, so 10,000 articles. It maybe just means that you're
• 48:12
  becoming part of the noise rather than the signal.
• 48:14
  We just, we just need to be careful about it.
• 48:16
  Does that mean a new edition of this book with a load of AI
• 48:19
  stuff, how and how not to use AI?
• 48:21
  And and I was just going to ask. So this is your second book,
• 48:23
  right that you read in second edition of the second book?
• 48:27
  Obviously this is a fantastic book that we have have both read
• 48:30
  and certainly in our early part of our journey kind of in our
• 48:34
  game, I think in in social selling.
• 48:35
  Thank. You very much.
• 48:36
  I really appreciate it. Yeah.
• 48:38
  Is there another book on the way from you or not?
• 48:39
  Anything planned? There might be.
• 48:43
  Oh nice, you heard it here first.
• 48:45
  There you go. And Tim, before we wrap up your
• 48:48
  shelf of shame, what in the world of sales, LinkedIn Fintech
• 48:53
  gives you that frustration and really grinds your gears?
• 48:58
  It would be the corporate brochure.
• 49:00
  Yeah, I, I remember my first start up, one of the salespeople
• 49:05
  said what we need is some brochures.
• 49:08
  So we didn't have much money and we went out and we created them
• 49:11
  and, and and printed them and they just sat in a box in the
• 49:14
  corner. Because actually it doesn't
• 49:16
  makes no, makes no odds. And we as a company, we didn't
• 49:20
  actually have a brochure until we've been going for four years
• 49:24
  where the sales force said we must have a brochure And again,
• 49:26
  they didn't use it. Most of them are gated as well,
• 49:28
  right? Yeah, yeah.
• 49:30
  And no one's going to fill in. You know, I, I filled in
• 49:32
  something from HubSpot. It took them 30 minutes to phone
• 49:36
  me up. I mean, it's grubby.
• 49:38
  I mean, it's like they're, you know, I'm sure that they see
• 49:42
  that as a great statistic and they're all patting themselves
• 49:45
  on the back. I just think.
• 49:46
  It's does that mean that you're in buy mode right as you fill
• 49:48
  out, you're in buy mode because you're willing.
• 49:50
  You wouldn't. Take on some stats from it.
• 49:52
  That's. True.
• 49:52
  I, I mean, I get lots of calls from HubSpot because I'll go
• 49:55
  there and they'll put a report out and I'll go and download the
• 49:58
  report and then they ring me up and say, hey, do you want to
• 50:00
  buy? And I say no.
• 50:01
  What makes you say that? Yeah, because it's like, well,
• 50:04
  you've just downloaded a report and.
• 50:07
  I was gonna ask you about emails as well, 'cause I get about 50
• 50:09
  of them a week trying to sell me stuff that's completely.
• 50:11
  Irrelevant from them emails emails are just spam.
• 50:14
  Just, you know, emails are just a, a cold call on social media.
• 50:19
  There's no. There's no context.
• 50:21
  There's no relationship. What they are though, right?
• 50:23
  They are, but it allows you to to digest that e-mail.
• 50:26
  I think they should haven't. Taken rid of it.
• 50:28
  No, the, the, the only reason why they're, they're there is
• 50:31
  because LinkedIn make money from it.
• 50:33
  So if you, if you talk to LinkedIn about social selling,
• 50:36
  LinkedIn will tell you that the e-mail is the world's best,
• 50:40
  world's best thing ever. And it's not, it's rubbish.
• 50:43
  You shouldn't. We don't, we don't teach.
• 50:45
  We've never used them. We don't teach people how to use
• 50:47
  them. What you want is you want a
• 50:49
  relationship with somebody, and that's a connection.
• 50:51
  Yeah, yeah. And you want to know how to
• 50:53
  create a connection so that people connect and then how to
• 50:56
  spark a conversation. That's the skills that you need
• 50:59
  because you've got that connection for life.
• 51:01
  Yeah, but insightful as we were expecting it to be.
• 51:05
  Really enjoyed that one. Where can people get in touch
• 51:07
  with you? Where can they find out more
• 51:08
  about you guys? Not in males.
• 51:11
  The best place to find me is on LinkedIn.
• 51:13
  I'm Tim or Timothy Hughes on LinkedIn.
• 51:16
  You'll see that I have a very different summary title to
• 51:19
  everybody else. And you'll see the book social
• 51:23
  selling on the at the the the top.
• 51:27
  So yeah, people can get me there or Tim at dlaignite.com.
• 51:32
  Amazing, Tim. Thank you so much for your time.
• 51:33
  Thank you. You're welcome.