Steve Watt: Social Selling That Wins Enterprise Customers

Sourabh Kothari:
Everybody, thank you for joining us. As you know, this is a live Q&A. We go straight into it. We don't do intros or any slides. We get right to the topic. So I have with me today, this is exciting because Steve's perspective is very experienced, there's a lot of insights, but it's controversial compared to what you might be seeing from a lot of social media marketing platforms. And that's all I'm going to say about Steve Watt from Seismic. I'll leave the rest to him. Steve, how are you?

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Steve Watt:
I'm excellent, Sourabh. Thanks for having me on and yeah, nice tee up. Now I've got to deliver something really provocative, don't I?

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Sourabh Kothari:
Exactly. Right. Let's see how credible you are.

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Steve Watt:
Yeah.

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Sourabh Kothari:
So I do think, if you don't mind for just a moment, Steve, if you could play devil's advocate, what is the general misunderstanding of what social selling is and then we'll flip the script.

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Steve Watt:
Yeah. I think a lot of people think that social selling means connect and pitch. It means pitch slapping people. It means hunting. It means just using LinkedIn as another channel to just go barge into people's worlds. And I mean maybe that worked to some extent five or six years ago. It doesn't work now. People are fed up with it, they're done with it, they put up walls to keep you out, and you're actually burning your personal reputation and collectively, you and your teammates are burning the brand of your organization when you're still barging into people's worlds uninvited. So I think that we need to completely reframe what social selling is and can be. And that's why I tend to speak in terms of buyer-centric social selling because I think that forces us to actually be interesting and valuable to our customers or our prospects rather than just hunting them.

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Sourabh Kothari:
And that is exactly why you're here. This is the only time I'm going to explain this is Lead2Pipeline launched a year ago. We are buyer-centric, we look at people that are interested in certain topics or products and then present them to a client instead of the opposite. Find me anybody remotely interested? No, nobody needs more of that. These people are interested. Now, let's connect them to your content and your journey. So what is social selling when done right?

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Steve Watt:
Well, for me it starts with the mindset of asking yourself, "Why is anybody on LinkedIn?" I'll tell you, they're not there to be hunted by you. They're also not there to be blasted with ads. They're not there to fill out forms and end up in your email cadences. They're on LinkedIn for two reasons. There's only two reasons anybody spends their precious time there. One, to learn something. And two, to advance their own interests.

Now, what advance their own interests means is different from person to person. It might be advance their career, it might be grow their business, it might be find a new job. It could be lots of things, but they're there for themselves. They're not there for you. And the big problem is that most people either don't see that or don't care, and they just operate in a very selfish mindset and they're hunting and they're advertising and they're wondering why nobody's engaging with them and nobody cares. So when you start with the fact that they are there for themselves, now you have to actually fit into their world. You actually have to be valuable and interesting to them. You have to help them learn and grow. You need to educate and you need to inspire and you need to show up with an honest intent to help others, thereby you enhance your reputation, you build and you deepen and nurture relationships and you start to pull the right people toward you. And it's fundamentally different from going in there with a hunting mindset.

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Sourabh Kothari:
Yeah, I think the closest thing studied at a larger macro level to what you're describing, it goes beyond being an influencer. I don't think it really addresses it. At the political sense, there's something called soft power. It's the influence that countries or organizations have on others without military or financial means. People want to collaborate with them, people turn to them for guidance. They are the best-case scenario of X, Y, Z. So this is a really, really great notion from a selling perspective of accumulating and building soft power, which is inherently helpful to the person that is coming to you.

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Steve Watt:
Exactly.

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Sourabh Kothari:
As opposed to damaging.

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Steve Watt:
I like to say, "How about focus on becoming the salesperson that people actually want to talk to?" What a concept. Most sales motions are all about barging into people's worlds and trying to almost force a premature conversation. How about we turn that around and say, "Let's consistently position ourselves such that people actually want to speak with us." And then we're going to become far more efficient and far more effective. In fact, I wrote a piece for the LinkedIn Sales Blog that just went live a few hours ago today on exactly that topic. It's entitled How To Become The Salesperson That People Want To Talk To. And it really digs into how transformational that can be as an individual and as an organization when you really invest in becoming valuable to your prospects rather than just hunting them.

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Sourabh Kothari:
Exactly. And I love the fact that you used a real-world scenario because that is the scenario most salespeople are wishing to get back to have the actual in-person engagement and have a full 3D experience with a human where the body language is telling you everything. I love the piece of how it describes how certain high-performers, and this is true across industries. It's true for high-performing salespeople across teams, is they're invited into deals, they are asked for guidance, which will often turn into an opportunity because they have built that reputation and credibility.

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Steve Watt:
Right on. And that confidence, and let me just add one more thing before you go to that, that confidence that they have in you, that emerging trust that they have in you. This is not just about top of funnel, it's not just about lead gen. This is about deal momentum throughout the entire deal. When you're the salesperson that people actually want to talk to, not only do you get the meeting, but they start bringing their boss and their colleagues in earlier, they start assembling the buying group because they know that this is going to go well and they're looking for reasons to make this deal happen.

So you get better velocity within your deal and you get larger deals because they're not just hedging and putting a toe in the water. They're like, "No, I really believe this can work well for us. Let's be leaning into this conversation rather than hedging our bets." So I mean, I think it's critical that people get into a buyer-centric mindset, but it's also critical that they understand that social selling is not just about top of funnel, it is about the entire funnel right through to purchase and beyond.

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Sourabh Kothari:
And that's what we're going to spend most of our questions on because the ones I have here, they're built around that.

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Steve Watt:
Awesome.

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Sourabh Kothari:
Let's start from the beginning. Say you have identified a target group of accounts, you know that your company or your solution has an awesome chance at winning with these accounts. How does a salesperson start the relationship? Where does it begin? And then we'll walk through the stages.

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Steve Watt:
Right. Well, I think it starts before there's any contact made. I mean, first of all, take a hard look at your own LinkedIn profile. Most salespeople, and frankly, most people's LinkedIn profiles are terrible. They're either bare bones resumes with a list of where they used to work, or sometimes for salespeople, they're even worse. They're like brag sheets. "120% quota attainment for 12 consecutive quarters, 3 years running President's Club." It's like, wow, okay. It's very clear what's important to you and that's you and your own success and your own money. And frankly, it looks like you're looking for a job. It doesn't at all look like you care about me, the buyer. So first off, before you even try engaging with anyone, rewrite your profile and make it much more human and make it much more buyer-centric. Who are you? Who is your firm? Who do you serve? And why do you make a difference in their world? So that would be the first thing.

And then I'd also start looking to share content that is interesting and relevant to that industry and to those sorts of people, and not just your company's promotional content too. If this company in your hypothetical example is let's say they're in telecom, well start sharing some content that it might be from industry sources, it might be news media, it might be from academic sources. Share content, in the process of finding that and reading that you're learning for one thing. But as you share it, you are signaling that you walk the same road that they do. And don't just share it like, boop, there it is. Bring your own voice to it. Talk about why are you sharing this piece? What did you learn from it? What do you think is particularly challenging or exciting or controversial or difficult about it?

And now what you're doing is you are demonstrating credibility. You're starting to demonstrate potentially even subject matter expertise in topics that matter to these buyers. So now you're not just some random sales guy barging into their world. You're getting this credibility flywheel going before there's any outreach or any contact with anyone. And I think that skipping this early part is a huge mistake.

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Sourabh Kothari:
So let me take this a step further. As people are developed in their careers, are really mastering their sales role in a particular industry and certain use cases, should salespeople ... I mean, time is always limited. Should salespeople be taking the time each week or month to also be creating original content?

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Steve Watt:
I think that there can be great value in that, but it's not for everybody. I firmly believe that get the profile right is essential. Share valuable content is essential. Bring your own voice to that content is essential. Self authoring content, that's a higher bar. I do it. I love doing it. It's been hugely valuable to me in so many ways, but I understand that that is a high bar and it's not for everyone. And I don't think that we should position it as that's essential or else what happens is people, "Okay, forget it then. I'm out."

The profile, the content you share, the voice you bring, and I've really failed to mention here so far, another critical part is the engagement that you provide others, the way you comment on other people's posts. So you're following all these people in this company and in the companies that are adjacent to them and their industry, and you're reading what they have to say and you are engaging in the comments with them. And again, you're learning, you're learning the language, you're learning how things work, you are showing that you care. I think that all of that stuff is critical, and I think it's a big mistake any salesperson who's not doing that stuff and any sales leader, an enablement leader who's not helping their team to embrace those mindsets and skill sets. But then above that is self authoring your own content. I think that's a nice to have, not a must-have.

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Sourabh Kothari:
Love it. Thank you for that. That's really, really helpful to clarify. I'm going to take us now to the next step in the relationship. As you have been sharing, as you have been commenting in some cases, you've been celebrating the wins that the folks you are hoping to work with, your prospects, are having and your industry peers, people that they know, you know as well. So you're showing up. When's the right point or maybe the right method at which to try to make a more direct relationship or a connect? Is there a right time or right way to do it? Especially for say, tech buyers because oftentimes you're reaching out to someone who's not in sales and marketing.

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Steve Watt:
Right. Yeah, I mean, I think that most salespeople ought to slow their roll. I think they're too quick to go to the connection, they're too quick to go into the DMs, they're too quick to go to the ask. I think you've got to give, you've got to make more deposits into that bank account before you try to make a withdrawal. So all the stuff we've talked about helps. And in some cases, if you do a really good job, they may reach out to connect with you. Wonderful. The fish jumped in the boat. Doesn't happen a lot, but it does. But another thing you can do, instead of going right to the connection request and the dreaded connect and pitch, the dreaded pitch slap, follow them. Just follow. You don't have to send the connection request, the two-way thing that they either accept or reject. And frankly, increasingly when you have sales in your title or business development or anything like that, it's an automatic delete for a lot of people because they've been conditioned to expect the pitch slap incoming.

So don't go for the connection request yet. Follow them. And that's a one-way thing. They neither say yes or no, and they might notice you and great, or they might not even notice, but now you're seeing their posts. And now ... If they post, and I'll come back to those who don't post, because obviously not all your prospects post, but some do. Wonderful opportunity to get in there and actually be interested in them and be helpful to them and amplify what they're saying and what they're doing. Now, of course, say in this hypothetical enterprise account, there might be a dozen people that you would love to strike up a relationship with and maybe say three of them are active on LinkedIn. Well, you know what? They're all connected to each other and some of those people lurk. So you follow and actively add value to the posts of those three. And probably five or six more of them are seeing that and they're starting to form a little bit of a positive impression of you and of your firm.

And you still haven't gone into the ask yet, you're still giving and you're cultivating that. And then as you go, again, a couple of people may reach out to you to connect if you're truly doing this well. And if you're not, then when you go to connect with them, you can do it in a way like, "I've really been enjoying my conversations with your colleague, Susan, and I've learned a lot from her and I think she's getting value from my relationship. Would you be interested in connecting as well?" There's a good likelihood now that they're going to accept that connection. Now, don't pitch slap them. Don't go right to the second, "Oh, you accepted my connection. Great. Can we get on a call on Tuesday?"

No, no, slow it down. Now they've accepted your connection request, now they're going to start seeing, remember, because you are now posting good content, they're going to see some of that and they're going to read some of that, and hopefully they're going to engage with some of that. And if they check out your profile, they're not just seeing your resume, they're seeing how you help people like them. So all of these pieces all come together, and yet if you try to force it ... Here's a metaphor that I've used with some of our own salespeople. I've said, "Let's not force this or we can spoil it." Think about if you've ever gone camping and made a campfire, so you've got the paper or the whatever, and then you've got your little kindling wood, your little sticks. You know how you got to build a roaring fire? You got to start small, and then you add fuel to the fire and you build it up.

If you've got just a few little flames there and you take a great big log and you drop it on it, there goes your fire. It's gone. And that's what a lot of salespeople do. The moment they get a little flicker of engagement, they drop the big log on it with the barging into the world, wanting the meeting, and people just tend to block them. So slow your roll, add fuel to the fire over time and actually build authentic engagement rather than just taking that slight flicker of engagement as a green light to barge into their world.

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Sourabh Kothari:
And so as we do this, say we've built the knowledge and the understanding for what is valuable to this set of buyers. And actually 3 out of 12 is a pretty good example. Especially in technology, there are a lot of buyers on the buying committee who are not on LinkedIn or not active so you've got to work with the people that are there outside of your other mediums, like place ads or email or phone if you are further down the [inaudible 00:17:23]. So as you are building the relationship, you are now commenting, they're commenting. The chat itself in LinkedIn is unique. Most salespeople have been trained somewhat on email. They've been trained somewhat on phone, but very few have been trained on chat. How do you chat with someone professionally? For many people, that's the only time they do it is on LinkedIn with people they don't know. So have you seen anything that works well as far as opening a dialogue so that, like you said, it's inviting, it's valuable when it is via say, LinkedIn chat now that we are connected?

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Steve Watt:
Yes. But I would first before rushing to the DMs, the chat, the private message, engage them in the public conversation. And I think this is a big miss for a lot of people. They think they've got to have all their conversations in the one-to-one, but in many cases, they're not ready for that. That's a step. And I'm on the receiving end of this a lot. Sometimes someone will like something I've posted or I will like or leave a comment on something that they've posted. Bam, there they are in my chat and it's like, "I'm not ready for that dude." And also when so much of what is in there is just spammy pitches, it's too early. So I really urge people to embrace the public conversation, and that is where you're going back and forth with them or you're at least trying to spark that in public, in the comments on their post. So that thing that you want to say to them, instead of saying it one-to-one, say it in public. And that does three things, I think at least.

One, their guard is down. Because as soon as you go to the DMs, it's like, "Ugh, do I really want to take the time? And once I engage with this guy, he's going to keep coming back." So their guard is down in the public conversation.

Two, is it forces you to actually be valuable because you know other people are looking and you're not just going to put in the public conversation, you're not just going to say, "Hey, can we get on a call on Tuesday?" It forces you to actually add value.

And the third thing it does is a bunch of other people look in and see that. So I mean, you might be having a bit of a back and forth with someone in the public conversation and 100 other people, 1,000 other people or more might be seeing it and might be thinking, "I kind of like that guy, I kind of respect what he's doing. I kind of think that maybe I might want to talk to him." So embrace the public conversation is the most important thing. And then as things progress to direct messages or to email or to the phone or to Zoom or whatever, you've already got such a foundation of mutual respect and relationship that everything is easy and natural by then. So again, don't rush it. Slow your roll and nurture that fire.

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Sourabh Kothari:
And this is a really important distinction, and we might have time for two more questions here, but when you do ... A lot of times if you truly understand what your buyer is trying to achieve, that's the first step is need. Especially in the subscription economy, Steve, we've seen that the ability to buy has become much easier for most things. There's much easier ways to start using a product and to start paying for it. So really it's about need. What problem are we solving? How does this, like you said, further your interests, your goal? I've spent time with you, I've learned that, and I have a hunch now for some of your colleagues too, what the use cases that would work for you. I've established myself as someone who's patient and understanding and frankly quite knowledgeable in the space because I've shared examples you weren't aware of and you sort of reciprocated.

Now, how do you determine when you have an active relationship like that putting all other intent data aside, it's a totally different conversation for both of us, for Seismic and for Lead2Pipeline. How do you determine in that conversation, unless the prospect out-and-out asks, "Are you guys doing anything in this space? Or, I'm just curious, we're looking for blah." Unless they do that, are there signs you've seen where you feel like the relationship has got to the point where you could offer them something that is valuable but is also qualifying if they're actually looking to buy?

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Steve Watt:
I mean, again, if your profile makes it clear who you are, who your company is, who you serve and why you matter, well, some of them are going to see that and they're going to, "Okay, I get it, that this is what they do." Also in the mix of content that you share, it's absolutely fine if some of that content is your company's promotional content. The mistake that people make is either they don't share anything at all or they share nothing but promotional content. Now, you're not a subject matter expert adding value to the conversation. You're an advertiser. But there's nothing wrong with mixing that in. So if you've got this connection, you've got a little bit of back and forth, and let's say maybe one out of every four or five posts that you share does explain what your company does and how you help, well, they're going to be seeing that. So you're weaving these things in.

Another thing that can be really effective is you've got subject matter experts within your firm that you could introduce to these people. So this is something that we do a lot at Seismic. So the part of the business that I focus on, no surprise, is social selling. And I'm that subject matter expert that our salespeople introduce in. So as they're cultivating these relationships and as they're building that rapport and that beginnings of trust, one of the many ways they can add value is say, "Hey, we've got a guy who knows a lot about this stuff and does a lot of work with companies like yours, and he's not a salesperson, but he's an expert in this space. Would you be interested in speaking with him?" And very often they are interested. And then I deliver on the promise of that when I get on the call. I don't go into sales mode. I genuinely make myself valuable in that conversation, and I share what I'm learning, I share what I'm learning from our customers and from others.

And all of this, it's about leading to the sale rather than leading with the sale. And I think that is maybe one of the best ways of summing it up. Most salespeople and most sales motions, and also frankly most marketing people and most marketing motions are all about leading with the sale. This is why you should buy what we sell. I believe you get a lot further when you lead to the sale. You build not only the reputation and relationships and everything we've been talking about, but by all the compounding value of everything that you're building is leading to the sale. And then you end up having the right conversations with the right people, and you have higher win rates, you have shorter sales cycles, you have larger deal sizes based on all of this work because you have led to the right conversation rather than trying to force it early.

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Sourabh Kothari:
And then as high-performing salespeople know, you'll also have the king of all leads, which is you have faster referrals.

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Steve Watt:
Yes.

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Sourabh Kothari:
People brought into the deal, are willing to acknowledge and celebrate success faster because you already started a trust, not doubt or pessimism. And they're like, "Yeah, absolutely."

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Steve Watt:
And they enthusiastically refer you within their own firm in a large enterprise. Rarely if ever do you make some enterprise-wide sale in a really large firm. You're probably selling to one business unit or one geographic region. So when you are truly helpful throughout every part of this, then they're far more enthusiastic about introducing you into those other business units or those other geographic regions as well.

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Sourabh Kothari:
So I guess the last question I think is very relevant to the audience you mentioned, which is marketers who aren't actively building these relationships, they're facilitating it. This is the last question. Is there anything or more than one thing that marketers can do to help their sales reps that are doing social selling right?

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Steve Watt:
Get active yourself. We've focused on salespeople here, but as a marketer, get active yourself. The payoffs are tremendous. Do all this same stuff that I'm talking about and you will learn. I mean, I have learned, I'm a much better marketer today than I was three or four years ago in significant part because of what I've learned on LinkedIn, what I've learned from scrolling my feed and reading. You've got people like Chris Walker out there and Dave Gerhardt and Sangram Vajre, and there's all these super smart people who are showing up and sharing, learn from them. But I also learn from the conversations I have with people, the debates I have with people, you're just going to learn so much is one thing. And you're going to get so much better at enunciating your point of view and your perspective and your firm's perspective.

I mean, think about it, to use a baseball analogy, it's like a lot of at-bats. I have had thousands and thousands and thousands of at-bats on LinkedIn explaining things in different ways, shorter, longer for this audience, for that audience, and with someone who gets it, with someone who I sense doesn't get it. Thousands of at-bats. I've gotten so much better at enunciating what I believe and what I stand for and what my company does. And so I mean, you're growing as an individual, you're growing as a marketer, you're getting so much better at so many things, you're building so many great relationships.

So I mean, there's a ton of wins for a marketer before you ever create a lead for your sales team or before you ever advance an opportunity for your sales team. But I promise you, if you do all this stuff with an honest intent to really educate and inspire, you'll do those things too. I am directly creating leads for my sales team that people are reaching out to me because of what I do, I have conversations with them, and then as appropriate, I move them to the right salesperson and I also advance deals. So do it for yourself, first of all, but then also recognize if you consistently do it and do it well, you're also doing a world of good for your employer.

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Sourabh Kothari:
Love it. Thank you so much, Steve. I really appreciate it.

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Steve Watt:
We're out of time already. Come on, man. We could go all day.

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Sourabh Kothari:
Let people get back to marketing and selling. And one thing, Steve, it really remains to be said is over the past two years, folks have had a difficult transition to building relationships digitally. And many people that are good at this are looking forward to in-person events. I really do hope that we can pick the conversation up in person, but I really do on behalf of the audience, that is a little hesitant to make these moves. I think it's really helpful. And I think they'll go back and listen to each piece of advice that you said, because I think it's a very sort of practical way of approaching this that takes the pressure of an immediate result off.

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Steve Watt:
Yes. And you don't need to become a superstar at this overnight. It's not a light switch. It's not like you go from zero to ... It's a journey. You're always a journey. And so if you're totally new to this, start small, fix your profile and just start engaging in some conversations. Just go read some posts and leave some comments, baby steps, and I promise you it gets easier as you go and it gets really gratifying. So don't sit this out.

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Sourabh Kothari:
I love it. Thank you so much, Steve. We've got to bring you back and I hope you do have a good week. We'll see you soon.

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Steve Watt:
Thanks, Sourabh. It's been a pleasure.

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Sourabh Kothari:
Take care, man. Bye.