Inside LinkedIn: buyer behavior, how to social sell, why warm intros get 3x the response, why only 45% of sellers are seen as trustworthy and the 4 behaviors that separate top sellers | Catherine Flynn (LinkedIn Sales Navigator)

0:00Catherine Flynn: If you're posting on LinkedIn even once a week, you're already head and shoulders above 99 % of the other sellers out there.

0:07Sophie Buonassisi: Where would you say the best introductions come from?

0:10Catherine Flynn: It comes from mutual connections. So existing advocates, customers and buyers that you've worked with before, or leaders or colleagues at your own company who have those existing relationships.

0:21Sophie Buonassisi: Catherine Flynn. She leads global marketing for LinkedIn's sales solutions business. What should sellers' profiles look like on LinkedIn?

0:28Catherine Flynn: They should definitely not just look like your resume. You know, when a buyer is checking you out, they're not saying, where did Sophie go to school? Or what have her most recent two jobs been? They're actually thinking, is this person credible on the things I care about? And how can they help me?

0:43Sophie Buonassisi: What is the number one kind of trending direction of the algorithm on LinkedIn? Are we going to see photos, videos, text?

0:51Catherine Flynn: It is all about relevance to your network. And video is booming on LinkedIn. That is certainly no secret.

0:57Sophie Buonassisi: you're seeing more of it we're seeing it perform are you able to give us any kind of sneak previews into what's coming down the pipe

1:18Catherine Flynn: katherine welcome to gtm now thank you sophie i'm a big fan of the show thank you for having me

1:25Sophie Buonassisi: we appreciate you coming on super excited to chat and now I've got to ask to start you know you're an executive at a company where everyone's career lives LinkedIn how did you end up working at the

1:37Catherine Flynn: renowned name and company that we all know well I've been a marketer in one way or another for over 25 years I've spent most of that in tech although and I started out in agencies and in consumer marketing, but I've made sort of B2B and social my home for the last 15 or so years. I worked at Meta for quite a long time and then I joined LinkedIn almost three years ago and I currently lead marketing for our sales solutions business. So most people will know our main product, Sales Navigator. And a theme for me and how I got to LinkedIn and my career in general is that I've been lucky enough to market products that I personally love and personally use.

2:16Catherine Flynn: And And LinkedIn is one of those. And also Sales Navigator is a product that I actually sold in when I worked at Facebook over 13 years ago when we were building our first sales teams there. So a combination, I think, that led me to LinkedIn of personal passion and then just career that had progressed over the years from consumer to tech to B2B marketing. I'm really, really lucky to be here.

2:40Sophie Buonassisi: That is super cool. Very interesting to hear your journey. And what's your favorite part now about working on LinkedIn?

2:45Catherine Flynn: Well, today, I think along with we have an amazing culture and values that sort of like frame and drive how we operate every day. But I think in my role specifically, I'm based, Sophie, as I think, you know, in Singapore, a lot of the sales solutions business right now is being built out of APAC. So we are a truly global team and we're able to innovate, I think, at a faster pace than we have been before. So we've got a lot of goodness coming for our customers and the broader industry in the coming months. So I think right now it's being able to do a global role and run a global team along with some fantastic partners from, you know, the other side of the world to where you're sitting today, even though I do spend a lot of time on your side of the pond.

3:28Sophie Buonassisi: That's amazing and excited to hear about all the announcements. I have been a sales navigator of customers in the very beginning of my career and it is an absolute non-negotiable. I keep it at all times. Thank you.

3:39Catherine Flynn: We have that in common. The key tools.

3:40Sophie Buonassisi: Yes, exactly. Exactly. And I'm sure we are not alone. So everyone will be very excited to hear some of the details we're going to dive into in this interview. And, you know, LinkedIn recently published a report, The Trust Advantage. And there was a really interesting point in it I want to bring forth because you actually asked buyers how they want to be reached. Can you rank them for us? Give them to us maybe top to bottom.

4:05Catherine Flynn: Well, one of the things we found when we surveyed thousands of B2B buyers globally in the last year is that it's not actually about the channel. So I can't give you a list of in-mail is here, WhatsApp is here, email is here, good old phone call is there because they all still matter. And there's a real preference from a buyer's perspective. But what really matters is relevance because AI has made information abundant. It has meant that our buyers or us as buyers, because we're all buyers for our own businesses, we're more informed than ever before by the time a seller gets to sit across from us or have a conversation with us.

4:44Catherine Flynn: And that creates a real opportunity because while the information now is more abundant than ever, we found in this research that trust is actually harder to find and build than ever before.

4:57Sophie Buonassisi: And I believe I remember reading, I think it was 86 % of buyers say expertise is actually what builds trust. But there was a crazy metric that only 45 % described the sellers they meet as trustworthy. So, yeah. Why the 41 point gap?

5:14Catherine Flynn: So that was, you've picked out the thing that was most surprising to me because, you know, it wasn't necessarily a surprise to us, maybe a little bit more so earlier last year at the sort of AI takeover of the buying process where, you know, we're all, you know, I think it was 94%, but I think at this point we can probably say 100 % of all of us are using AI at every stage of the buying process. But that gap that you called out between what buyers expect, so they expect sellers to have expertise on their industry, have expertise on the product that they're bringing to the table. But under 50 percent, I think it was 45 percent, actually experience the sellers that they meet every day as trustworthy.

5:58Catherine Flynn: And the gap flips over when we surveyed. We went out a second time and we surveyed sellers because we were so interested in what was going on. And sellers are going around with this perception that they're absolutely trustworthy, that they are, you know, making everything super relevant. But there's a there's a huge gap there. And rather than treat it as a gap, I'm an optimist. And at LinkedIn, we we want to be helpful to the, you know, the industries and the customers that we serve. So we wanted to present it as an opportunity because we think it really is because there's so many tools available to us to make trust building easier.

6:36Catherine Flynn: And hence the advantage rather than we didn't call it the trust gap. We called it the trust advantage.

6:41Sophie Buonassisi: I love that optimistic take. And as it should be, you know, it's an evolving era right now, particularly with AI. There's a lot of opportunity for sellers to actually capitalize and really become the best sellers that they possibly can right now. So it's a very exciting time. What does expertise, since that is, you know, huge, huge catalyst for building trust, what does that actually look like in a first conversation?

7:03Catherine Flynn: So in a first conversation, it is more about their problems, your insights on what's going on for them than it is about you. So I could be the world's best expert in Sales Navigator. I'm not. We have lots of them. I know a bit. but coming to the table saying Sophie I saw that you recently expanded your business in Japan I saw that you're hiring in you know the UK you know what does that mean in terms of your business strategy so again a bit like when we talked about channels it's less about the specific channel of choice and more about the relevance of the message when it comes to expertise it's it's still about starting with their industry, their problem, their business, then it is about going straight and being like, have you seen my new AI powered feature?

7:54Catherine Flynn: And that's really what starts to build the expertise and the credibility for the next stages of the journey.

8:02Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, I love that framing. And I mean, everybody, at the end of the day, they are in conversation to solve a problem. So if you can come with some relevance and showcase your expertise in their problem, that sounds like it builds trust immediately. And thankfully now, I mean, with AI, we've got more signals than ever before to actually pick up on these things, understand if they've expanded to Japan and so forth. Has that helped sellers from your purview at LinkedIn or, you know, having more information? Has that made a difference?

8:29Catherine Flynn: It's definitely helping the sellers who are taking the time to capitalize on that. So all of this, you know, new levels of signals and insight and information are there at our fingertips with many of the AI tools. And Sales Navigator is just one of those that's taking all of the insight and the data from our 1.3 billion members using LinkedIn every day and tailoring it specifically for the sales context. But not every seller is taking the time to do that now. I think the other thing that AI has made really easy is spraying and praying at a level never seen before. And the temptation, of course, is there to automate as much as possible, you know, increase the volume of outreach.

9:18Catherine Flynn: But, you know, if I want us to stand for anything, it's maybe even just that we could be doing less outreach than ever before. We could be way more selective in who sellers, you know, reach out to because we've got that much more signal on what is going on for them. And we're really trying to build more and more of that in much more, in even more real time into the product when it comes to what we can offer for sales teams.

9:44Sophie Buonassisi: One of the things that was really appreciated about the product SalesNav specifically is the ability for it to actually capture the context of connections, because people have many different connections, but you often don't know how close is that connection. And it'll show you, you know, did somebody go to school together? Are they former colleagues. So you get a little bit more color to that connection. And that really helps with warm introductions. We see it all the time at GTM Fund on the founder side. But everybody knows warm connections are very effective. It's often extremely hard to quantify.

10:18Sophie Buonassisi: So maybe you can help us understand that what is technically a warm connection from the LinkedIn perspective? And then what difference does that actually make if you can quantify it going warm versus cold? Sure.

10:30Catherine Flynn: You know, on the topic of trust, one of the fastest parts to trust is through someone who already has it. So when we talk about warm introductions or warm paths on LinkedIn, what we mean in the context of our network is mutual connections or even better referrals. and you know sales navigator gives you the extra level of detail versus linkedin the platform on exactly how you're connected and the strength of those connections which can be really helpful but we see that mutual connections generate nearly a three times higher in-mail response rate or acceptance rate and then a 2x higher connection request acceptance than if you just outreach cold makes sense you know i'm sure if you get a linkedin request you or an in-mail request you will check who is this person and am I connected to other people in the same network?

11:21Catherine Flynn: But that credibility is really, really important. So that's what we mean by warm. And we really, really encourage sellers to take full advantage of those mutual connections, both in their network, but also at their company.

11:33Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic to quantify it too.

11:36Catherine Flynn: We see top performing sellers are the ones who are also using exec sponsors. And, you know, I get regular requests from salespeople within LinkedIn to say, hey, Catherine, I've seen that you're connected to this person or that person. Would you mind sending them something like this message introducing us? And I'm always really happy to do that because that's a really smart way to use not just your network, but your internal executive sponsors and leaders.

12:03Sophie Buonassisi: I'm curious if you have a sense for how many sellers or what percentage of sellers actually leverage executive sponsors to the fullest capability.

12:12Catherine Flynn: So we know that top performing sellers do this way more than all sellers. So the highest yield entry points are from customer advocates and former customers of yours who might now be in new companies and new target accounts. And then top sales performers are also almost 50 % more likely to use exec sponsors at their own company as entry points. So it's a real hack that can be underrated in the sales process.

12:42Sophie Buonassisi: Oh yeah, that's a massive percentage. And so it sounds like executive sponsors is a great way to actually help facilitate these warm introductions. Where would you say the best introductions come from?

12:53Catherine Flynn: It comes from mutual connections. So existing advocates, customers and buyers that you've worked with before, or leaders or colleagues at your own company who have those existing relationships. So existing relationships are a fast track to those warmer introductions.

13:11Sophie Buonassisi: Brilliant. And once we get that warm introduction into an account, of course, you know, multi-threading is a topic that comes up often. From LinkedIn's perspective and all the data that you have, having hundreds of sellers, how many people should a rep be connected with inside a target account?

13:26Catherine Flynn: Yeah. So one of the things that we know is that buying groups are getting bigger all the time, or buying committees are getting bigger all the time, at the same time that sales cycles, despite AI are getting even longer. So having multiple connections at a company, not just when you've had your first meeting or made the first connection, but starting the multi-threading as early as possible in the journey was one of the top four behaviors we saw when we researched what is building trust today in the era of AI for sellers. So start definitely multi-thread, But you really can't start too early on the multi-threading.

14:05Catherine Flynn: It's a huge opportunity.

14:07Sophie Buonassisi: Gotcha. And you've teased out a couple of them. But can you give us the four that came out, the four top behaviors for sellers that really differentiate top sellers from the rest? Yeah.

14:17Catherine Flynn: What is making top sellers stand out with the abundance of information and the lack of trust that can exist in the era of AI? Very briefly, I would describe these as signal-based selling. So taking advantage of all of the information, the signals, those signals on LinkedIn are pretty real time in terms of job change or, you know, company news or information are some of the most powerful ones. So that's number one. Multithreading, we just talked about it, is number two. So it's a common concept in sales, but really not sleeping on the opportunity to multithread in new ways and to do it really well.

14:57Catherine Flynn: It's definitely an advantage. Timely engagement. So the top, top sellers are reaching out within hours, not days or weeks, of a job change or a company, something changing about the company or a new product launch. So on LinkedIn, you're getting that information pretty much in real time. Other providers that are out in the market are, you know, that data is often weeks or even months old. So the timeliness cannot be understated. And then finally, number four, sounds obvious, but personalized outreach. And I mean, really personalized outreach, not just hi, insert name here, where we've all been on the bad end of receiving non-personalized outreach.

15:44Catherine Flynn: And I think the excuses are really gone in terms of sellers not taking the time to, once you've had all of those other steps, really personalize your outreach and build a connection and the trust. So those are the four.

15:58Sophie Buonassisi: Those are our big four items. And if we dive into the first one, I remember reading that profile views was also one of the single most predictive signals that you can pull on from that first signal based metric side, which essentially means that buyers are checking sellers profiles before they answer to understand that trust and credibility. So what should sellers profile look like on LinkedIn?

16:23Catherine Flynn: Yeah, they should definitely not just look like your resume. You know, we encourage all sellers to be taking advantage of all of the kind of features that your LinkedIn profile can give you. And that's about, you know, when a buyer is checking you out, they're not saying, where did Sophie go to school? Or what have her most recent two jobs been? They're actually thinking, is this person credible on the things I care about? And how can they help me? So I think sellers, no matter what stage they're at in their career, should have a point of view that they share on LinkedIn, a point of view on the industry that their product is solving for or the key industries that their buyers and prospects are in, and also show who they are, right?

17:08Catherine Flynn: How do you distinguish yourself from the millions of other sellers on LinkedIn and even the other sellers in your industry? Bring a bit of personality, bring a bit of humor. LinkedIn ranks content higher when it's seen as helpful, knowledgeable and has a clear point of view. So that's where I would start.

17:26Sophie Buonassisi: Super good to know. And when we talk about ranking, that's a big question mark for people when they think about posting. Should sellers be posting on LinkedIn first and foremost?

17:36Catherine Flynn: Well, I read a great tip from one of the many great sales creators on LinkedIn, because there are lots that we partner with and who are out there advising sellers and the industry on how to get the most out of social selling and LinkedIn. And this one came from a guy called Daniel Disney. And Daniel was saying that if you're posting on LinkedIn even once a week, you're already head and shoulders above 99 percent of the other sellers out there. I can't verify the stat, but it certainly feels true. And he was also advising the concept of using your content to warm up your prospects. And that's not just about you have to be sitting down and long posting multiple times a week.

18:17Catherine Flynn: It can be as simple as responding on, you know, your prospect posts, job announcement. Congratulations, Sophie. You know, it doesn't need to be an in-mail straight off the bat or an email straight off the bat. So I think there's a huge untapped advantage for any seller out there to use their LinkedIn profile, the content that they're posting, but also the engagement. You know, we see you will get a lot more reach on LinkedIn if you're showing that you're actively engaging and contributing to the community, not just putting your own content out there.

18:50Sophie Buonassisi: That's an excellent algorithm tip. And to that extent, you shared, you know, posts may go further with clarity, expertise, a strong POV. Are there any other little tips about the LinkedIn algorithm that you'd encourage people to think about when they're creating content, whether it be sellers or founders or investors or any go to market operator?

19:10Catherine Flynn: I think those, you know, those key pillars of, you know, personality, authenticity, expertise, like having a point of view, you don't have to be the expert in your field, but having an interesting point of view on something that's happening in the market and, you know, really contributing and giving back, you know, to use a phrase to the community that you're in. Those are the main ones. The other advantage, this is less about the LinkedIn algorithm specifically, but more just about discoverability in this era of AI search that we're all in. You're actually helping the LLMs rank the information if you are more expert or providing useful information.

19:54Catherine Flynn: We're seeing that LinkedIn is now the number one cited domain, most cited domain for professional queries according to profound so by putting your thoughts and expertise out there you are not just you know improving how you get ranked and discovered but you're improving how your company and your product gets ranked and discovered so I think for sellers to understand that they're they're not just being more credible to their own buyers but they're helping their their companies rank better in LLM search is a real, really, really important tip that I would want to share.

20:29Sophie Buonassisi: That is an extremely important tip. Absolutely. And we're seeing this huge wave too of companies leveraging, similar to the executive sponsor, but externally, leveraging all their employees to now be voices of the company as we've realized people gravitate towards people and want to hear from people. So that completely makes sense. You know, not only are we leveraging it for just voice and company reach, but it truly is company impact on the AEO front too.

20:55Catherine Flynn: Yeah, it's really business critical in this day and age, you know, to be more discoverable and then to be more buyable as a, like, I think a lot about this as a marketer. It's not just, you know, the information that you put out there, how you rank and search is still really, really important, but employee voices, like you say, expert voices, all of those things, customer voices, they become so much more important to shine a light on and make sure they're part of your content strategy.

21:24Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, we call this the distribution era internally on our side where, you know, we've gone through multiple eras and we went through a product in more of a PLG motion era. And a shift in era does not mean that that goes extinct by any means. PLG is thriving. However, the priority of how you grow has shifted and how you go to market. And now it really is that that distribution and discoverability is a massive, massive part of that.

21:49Catherine Flynn: I love that. Yeah. One of the where I'm actually measuring within my team, within our marketing metrics, we're measuring discoverability for the first time this year, because that really plays to how we're found and how we're understood in this era when information is just completely abundant.

22:08Sophie Buonassisi: That's fascinating. Let's talk a little bit about your team and your product. So your team being and product being Sales Navigator. When you think about your team composition and you are leading marketing for Sales Navigator, what has shifted in terms of how you lead or how you execute as a team now in this AI era, if you will?

22:30Catherine Flynn: Yeah, so our mission as a marketing team is to help CROs, sales leaders, sales teams, sellers get the most value out of LinkedIn for sales and for selling. So some of that comes through how to best use our broader LinkedIn platform. And then a lot of our work comes into how to get the most out of Sales Navigator, which as a product has been around for a long time. I mentioned I sold it into Facebook when I was a middle sales manager there many years ago. But it has evolved and is evolving so much now with the AI and technology that's available to us. So we're still laser focused on that. And that looks different year over year.

23:10Catherine Flynn: So a bit like I was talking about, you know, tips for sellers to be more discoverable. We're trying to follow those tips ourselves. So I'm investing a lot more. We're investing a lot more in content that features our customers. And I would say, you know, I've been on a long journey in B2B marketing and customer testimonials and references have always been important. Sometimes have felt more like a nice to have. But now we are seeing that people trusting people is more important than ever when they can get pretty much any information they want at their fingertips. So customer stories and customer advocacy is one big investment that we're continuing to make.

23:50Catherine Flynn: And I would say on the product development side, because we are also at the forefront of leading the transformation and partnering with our product teams on what's coming in Sales Navigator and from LinkedIn for the sales industry. And that's really about, again, with our customers really digging in on where they see LinkedIn playing a role in the future now that they've got such a plethora of tools available to them. And we are not trying to be the only tool in the sales ecosystem, but we really want to be the most valuable and the most relevant one. So my team and I spend probably more time than ever exploring that sort of product future and testing and validating at a faster rate than we've ever done before new features that customers want to see from us.

24:39Sophie Buonassisi: Super exciting time. And actually, in preparation for our conversation, I reached out to 25 different sales reps and I asked them about their sales tech stacks and where LinkedIn falls in it. And every single one, every single one, 25 people said it falls in their daily usage and it is a must to have in their workflow and stacks.

24:58Catherine Flynn: Sorry, I was just going to say I'm extremely grateful to hear that. And we don't take that lightly. We do see, you know, Sales Navigator as a it is still such a fundamental tool for most sellers. They won't take a job that doesn't give it to them. They won't work in a sales org where it's not, you know, somewhere in the tech stack. But with new tools and technologies springing up all the time, we really want to continue to earn, you know, our place as the most valuable tool in a sales org stack. stack. So I interviewed about, you know, 30 or odd people. So similar from my own network when I started this role just over a year ago.

25:35Catherine Flynn: And I also heard that over and over again. So it's pretty humbling. And it's also really motivating because it makes me and us just want to innovate even faster and make our product more relevant.

25:46Sophie Buonassisi: That's super exciting. And the one kind of excitement question I got from everyone that I spoke to is, well, excited to hear what Catherine says about the roadmap overall and what's coming down the pipe. And everybody's getting a ton of value right now. But you mentioned you're working a lot on the innovation side. Are you able to give us any kind of sneak previews into what's coming down the pipe?

26:09Catherine Flynn: We've got a lot of really exciting things coming up in the Sales Navigator roadmap. And I think just as LinkedIn itself, hopefully you see it as a user, is constantly upgrading as a result of the AI that we're able to bring to the for. Today, you will see improvements in Sales Navigator in all of the features that are within there that have, you know, are and have been AI powered, like account IQ is even more powerful than ever. So, you know, as you're prepping for a meeting or an engagement or a new outreach, like that is one that is really an unfair advantage in terms of mining, not just publicly available information on companies, but also, you know, those live signals and changes that are happening, you know, from that company's employees on the platform.

26:54Catherine Flynn: Things like TeamLink. So you talked about executive sponsorship and making the most of your internal network. TeamLink allows you to, you know, basically map your company's whole network and serve it up to you in a way that you can really maximize your potential outreach to. So features like that that have been part of the product for a while are getting better all the time. And then I would say, you know, we are thinking so much when it comes to the future direction of our product, and we've talked a bit about this at, you know, recent events we've run around the world, is, you know, how do we bring more of the insights that Sales Navigator is known for, and more of those sticky things that the people you're talking to are telling you they couldn't do without, into places that sellers work.

27:38Catherine Flynn: So, you know, sellers workflows have changed dramatically over the last few years, and we want to continue to earn our place as a daily platform of choice for sellers. And that's going to mean from a future direction perspective, just being more where they work versus always, you know, having Sales Navigator as the destination. So that's probably as much as I can say for now, but we'll look forward to being back in touch as we start to roll out some of this over the next few months.

28:06Sophie Buonassisi: That is so exciting. And we're seeing a huge, huge kind of push for sellers around products going headless and just consolidating where they work. And I think it'll be a very, very exciting time to see those updates come out.

28:18Catherine Flynn: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, one other thing to add just on, you know, what we're doing or doing differently as a global team, the research that we've just talked about, Sophie, the trust advantage that you've seen, we periodically survey our customers and our buyers. And I think in the past as marketers, we either kept that research to ourselves to inform our sort of marketing or product development, or we put it behind, you know, lead generation forms or paywalls. And I personally believe as a marketer that those days are over and how we are in trust and credibility is by making that information and expertise available.

28:58Catherine Flynn: So, you know, we are now just putting research like that out into the world. When we have the insights, you'll have the insights and that's freely available. It's linkedin.com forward slash trust advantage for anybody to be able to benefit from it.

29:12Sophie Buonassisi: Amazing. And that will be in the show notes for anyone looking for it.

29:15Catherine Flynn: Awesome. If you don't mind the plug.

29:17Sophie Buonassisi: Yes, of course. It's a really valuable report. I had a ton of fun looking through it. The unique thing is, I mean, almost unanimously, everybody is on LinkedIn in the professional, particularly B-software and AI space. So they're all relevant findings to how we can be better on LinkedIn, but also better sellers. Now, Catherine, we'd love to dig into a little bit more of your methodology as a leader. We talked about what's changing for your team and how you're operating as a team. What about when we take a step back and talk about before people join your team, more of the hiring process? How are you thinking about bringing on people that are going to really help lead the company with you through this next year?

29:57Catherine Flynn: I've got to say that beyond, you know, resumes, specialisms, years of experience now, it is about adaptability and, you know, comfort with change or even better than that, you know, openness and appetite for change. I want people who are going to run at new problems and uncertain horizons more than ever before. So I think there's been a change in marketing in the last, you know, certainly 20 plus years since I've been in it. But, you know, the last five to 10 years specifically where we're moving away again from specialists, you know, people who are like complete domain experts in a specific field.

30:38Catherine Flynn: And while that's really important, I'm looking for marketing generalists. I'm looking for people who potentially can, you know, not be attached to the idea of having a specific team or org structure and really thinking about people who can build new solutions, you know, new types of products that can connect with customers. So it's hard to screen for. Again, I think this is where AI and in-person interaction have different things to offer, but I can screen for the expertise. But then it's about the in-person conversations, the networks, the trusted connections that will tell me, can this person really ride the waves of change that are coming up in the world that we operate in?

31:19Catherine Flynn: So I'm looking for adaptability above all, probably at this point.

31:23Sophie Buonassisi: And your networks actually speaks to adaptability, it sounds like.

31:26Catherine Flynn: Yes, exactly. And we can all reach out today, get a reference on someone. You know, we use those warm paths, we use our networks, we use LinkedIn to find those things out. But I will also highly rank someone who, like we talked about earlier, has a clear point of view on their own expertise, doesn't just present their resume on LinkedIn. But if I can go into their profile and see that they've shared content, that they're active participants in the industry, that they're, you know, building with AI, all of those things go a long way in the hiring process today.

31:59Sophie Buonassisi: Definitely. And I mean, we even on the founder side at GTM Fund, every time we're assessing a founder and we're in a deal flow, we're constantly looking at LinkedIn and understanding how can we backchannel this person?

32:09Catherine Flynn: And I'm sure it sounds like the same thing goes for when you're hiring to backchanneling and understanding networks is number one. Yeah. And we can all help people in those efforts to, you know, discover us or build credibility or a sense of credibility about ourselves. We have to remember that we are agents in this evaluation process, be it sellers or, you know, job seekers or marketers. And we can harness our presence online and our LinkedIn presence to help people do that.

32:37Sophie Buonassisi: I love it. Well, Catherine, I've got quite a few actually rapid fire questions here for you. Keep going.

32:43Catherine Flynn: It's all good. Yes, I'm ready. I love it.

32:45Sophie Buonassisi: All right. What is one LinkedIn setting or way to use a feature that you'd tell every single seller to turn on today?

32:54Catherine Flynn: Sellers switch on profile views. Not everybody has that turned on, but it is such a strong indicator of interest from either prospects that you're aware of or potential buyers that you might not even be aware of yet. And way less people than you would expect turn that feature on.

33:12Sophie Buonassisi: I love it. What is the number one kind of trending direction of the algorithm on LinkedIn? Are we going to see from a format perspective? Are we going to see photos, videos, text? Is there one ranking above the other?

33:26Catherine Flynn: I think mine is going to be very different to yours, Sophie, is what we're discovering. So it is all about relevance to your network. And video is booming on LinkedIn. That is certainly no secret. You're seeing more of it. We're seeing it perform better and better all the time. But I would really encourage anybody to test out different formats. I do video quite frequently. but last week I tried a carousel image post. So I took a bit of an Instagram trend, kind of chic was the trend going around and I used that trend in a professional context. And I saw more engagement from that particular post on the carousel format than I'd seen on some of my prior video posts.

34:07Catherine Flynn: So maybe I'm more interesting in static format than I am in video, but the message is I think experiment, post often and test out what's going to work for your audience. Use your analytics is another tip that I think not enough people leverage.

34:21Sophie Buonassisi: That is great advice. And I love that post, by the way. It's a fun trend. And in it, I think you mentioned, you know, kind of chic to move to Singapore for two years and then kind of chic to stay for, I believe it was seven.

34:36Sophie Buonassisi: What's like the biggest difference now operating in APAC compared to a building in North America that you see?

34:41Catherine Flynn: Yeah. So, I mean, the reason I moved here, First of all, I'm an extremely growth oriented person. I'm professional and I had done Europe. I had worked for U.S. companies, not in the U.S., but I'd worked on the U.S. market and for U.S. companies. And this was just a region of the world that I saw driving kind of exponential current and future growth for the companies that I was working with. And I just wanted a piece of that. I just wanted to learn. And I came here for two years and I've worked across all of the markets in APAC and now, you know, second time doing a global role from here. And really, it offers that global, truly global perspective that, you know, I think if you only ever sit in the US or in Europe, you will never really be fully able to bring to your company.

35:26Catherine Flynn: So I try to be that person who brings the global perspective, brings the new market growth perspective. and the buyers and the consumer behaviors are so different and always changing. So it keeps that growth mindset in me fed all of the time.

35:42Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, you've really got the perspective across APAC, EMEA, North America, the whole global viewpoint, which is super valuable for global companies.

35:49Catherine Flynn: I hope so.

35:51Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah. And in one of your videos, actually, speaking of videos in different formats, you mentioned that you have many hot takes and you listed a couple.

35:58Catherine Flynn: Give us one of your hot takes, Catherine.

36:00Sophie Buonassisi: What are you feeling spicy about?

36:03Catherine Flynn: You mean from a GTM perspective?

36:08Sophie Buonassisi: GTM perspective, unless you have a different hot take that you're like, I got to share this. It was a Ken Leon video. So it was very relevant to the creator ecosystem since you were there. So I'm curious.

36:17Catherine Flynn: I would say like hot takes today when it comes to what we're talking about here, revenue and GTM, revenue still runs through relationships. It is easy to get blinded by all of the technology available. But when it comes down to it, With the plethora of information that's available to us, the signals that we all most value as buyers when it comes to making decisions are credibility, connections, expertise, and that all ladders up to trust. So that's a hot take when it comes to how do I simplify all of this? Revenue still runs through relationships. I think for any CRO who's feeling under more pressure than ever before, that's really a truth.

36:59Catherine Flynn: And I think, you know, a hot take when it comes to career advice in GTM or, you know, anybody who's looking for that based on the experience that I've had is, you know, get out of your lane and get experience in some of the other GTM functions. Because it's easy to sit in sales and have perspectives on like what marketing can do much better. But, you know, I've been a sales leader at different points in my career, and I think I wouldn't have the job I have today had I not sort of gone outside of my comfort zone and run a sales team or led a CSM team, as I also did at a different point. So I think we are all so much more credible and have much more empathy for each other in, you know, the pace at which GTM moves today if we've actually sat in another chair or, you know, walked in somebody else's shoes for a while.

37:47Catherine Flynn: So get out of your lane is another would be another piece of advice for careers in GTM today.

37:53Sophie Buonassisi: That's a powerful, powerful message. And I promise I've only got a couple last questions for you here to put you on the spot. But these are a couple just finished this sentence. The thing nobody tells you about leadership is.

38:06Catherine Flynn: It's not a destination or a job title. It is a constant journey. I think in my career earlier, if I aspired to leadership or the kind of, you know, role or title I have today, I would have thought it was like an end goal. But as I discover, and I'm very glad to have discovered, I'm still learning all the time.

38:25Sophie Buonassisi: That's a beautiful takeaway. And the most underrated piece of go to market advice is?

38:31Catherine Flynn: Get experience outside your function or discipline. You know, if you're in marketing, I've worked in sales. If you're in sales, build something. You know, you can use AI to build anything from a marketing perspective today. And I think marketers who want to hold on to all their Legos are not future proofing themselves in the age of AI. So I think it offers us all the opportunity to get more experience and build more empathy and therefore more effectiveness throughout the full spectrum of functions within GTM.

39:03Sophie Buonassisi: And that's such a good call out because now more than ever, it's maybe easier is the wrong word, but more accessible for people to build. to try different things than ever before.

39:11Catherine Flynn: Accessible. Yeah. I mean, I can sit down with a seller and better help them build a targeted outreach strategy, or I can better use the signals that are important to them in an ABM campaign or another marketing context, where we can just have fun and build like a new webpage together quicker than we ever could before. So I think dropping our egos is an opportunity that's available to all of us now if we choose to embrace it.

39:38Sophie Buonassisi: Absolutely. And stepping outside of the go to market arena. I mean, it could be go to market, but it could be anything related to life. What is the overall best advice that you've gotten and who gave it to you?

39:49Catherine Flynn: If I take my mom out of the equation, because many of my, you know, best life advice came from came from my mother. But I'm a big fan of setting goals and big visions for yourself in your life. We say dream big, get shit done and know how to have fun at LinkedIn. And one of the best pieces of advice I've ever been given was throw your hat over the wall. So I will credit that to Lisa McCarthy of the Fast Forward Group. I'm a big fan of their bold vision methodology. But that one has really stuck with me because it's sort of that spirit of why not, you know, aim high, throw your hat over the wall, set a big bold goal and vision, and you might get halfway there.

40:28Catherine Flynn: And that could be further than you ever thought you would get. So I try and do that for myself and my life and my career. And I also try and encourage my team to do it. We've set a big vision for this year and the years ahead as a marketing team for LinkedIn for sales. And we're having a lot of fun seeing if we can get there.

40:46Sophie Buonassisi: Incredible. That is fantastic and applicable to everyone listening. Now, it feels remiss to not say, of course, people can find you on LinkedIn. But if you have to follow along with you and your journey, LinkedIn, that'll be in the show notes. Is there anywhere else anyone should find you?

41:04Catherine Flynn: You know, I think it's pretty much all LinkedIn at this stage. I like to think I worked for Facebook and Instagram and, you know, now I'm in my professional era. So pretty much everything you might want to know professionally. Also sharing a lot about what we're building and what we're doing at LinkedIn for sales. So LinkedIn is the place to find me. Instagram, you'll only get like mom life and bad food photos. So I would say LinkedIn is the place.

41:32Sophie Buonassisi: That sounds great. Great. Well, that'll be in the show notes for anyone. Captain, thank you so much. This has been absolutely fantastic.

41:38Catherine Flynn: Thank you so much. And thanks for your advocacy of Sales Navigator as well. We really appreciate it and love to hear the feedback.