1833 – Strategies for Human-Centric Social Sales with Tom Martin

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2:09With us right now, I'm so delighted to have Tom Martin. Tom, you are the founder of Converse Digital, and you are the author of the book, The Invisible Sale. Like I said, Tom, I already love what I'm seeing, but it's a joy to have you. Thank you, Tom, for joining us. No, thank you. I'm just flattered to be here. I've been a big fan. Yeah, we have a lot of great mutual friends kind of in the kind of the social media world. And, you know, in our and we were just kind of talking about this beforehand, you know, our bias, it looks like right, is that social media really is about meaningful creating and building meaningful relationships.

2:49It's about human to human connection. And I'm hoping, you know, to our friend that's listening to us, I'm so grateful that you're that you're here to kind of, you know, kind of kind of dive a geek out with us a little bit on this. But Tom, would you mind maybe just kind of giving us an overview of the work that you do? And then certainly we'll get into the content of the book. Yeah, well, when I founded the company in 2010, we founded it. It was really we were social media agency as early days. We were helping companies figure it out. Then I wrote the book because I was kind of early to the social selling thing.

3:19And over the last seven to 10 years, we've steadily moved to where now we really function as a B2B training, social sales training agency. And we're helping individuals and organizations learn how to really leverage the power of social media, relationship building, digital tools, how to create a digital presence that really facilitates prospecting, nurturing, and closing in a way that doesn't feel like you're a used car salesman.

3:47Well, so talk a bit about where we are. I don't know if you can give us a state of the union when it comes to connecting with audiences. My observation is that I think that there has been, unfortunately, a lot of bad practices, which I think have really burned over a lot of really good platforms. Things like Sales Navigator is just, it used to be pretty awesome for a lot of reasons. And today, I think that if you just do the lazy spray and pray stuff, I think we all know what you're going to get today. But I could, could you maybe give us a, you know, again, the areas, you know, when it comes to marketing, obviously, social media is a part of that.

4:29But like, what's working today? Well, what's not working well today anymore? Well, I definitely you knew you hit the nail on the head. The technology is such that the spray and pray costs you nothing. You can just scatter your message over lots of people and really end up annoying them, but not really converting anybody. AI is only going to make that worse. I mean, you have probably the same inbox I do, 50, 60 a day of just worthless, irrelevant dribble. But what I always say is this, I mean, it is really the technologist and not the technology that is to blame. I use automation software. I use it not just in email marketing and places like that.

5:11I use it on LinkedIn. I have a tool that I use that I can automate outreach and campaigns. And I've tested it ad nauseum. And what I find is that it can be actually quite effective. I can get a 15 to 20 % connection rate that allows, but I do it in a way that's very human. It's very straightforward. It's very easy. It's not salesy. I don't follow up immediately with a sales pitch. And it's been very, it's been very helpful for me, a small boutique agency where I am the sales department. It's, it enables me to scale up my outreach, but in a way that doesn't lose the humanity of that outreach. And I've said, I've tested different approaches.

5:51And honestly, the most successful one is just a super open, honest, Hey, here's why you would want to see me in your LinkedIn newsfeed every day. If you like that, great connect. If not don't, And it works really well and people like it. Tom, could you maybe break down some of the elements of activity that you see working really well? And if you want to throw a couple of other bad practices under the bus, you're welcome to. I think we've already covered that in nauseam. But share maybe a bit about what you and your clients do that has really been successful for them. Well, the main thing that I think that we do and the thing that we teach our clients to do is first and foremost, help.

6:33Help the people first. Prove your worth. Show them you care about something more than just a transaction. You really care about building a relationship. And so like I said, my most successful LinkedIn connection message is, hey, here's who I am. I publish and share information about sales nurturing, prospecting, closing for in a way that's not that traditional sales always be closing approach. It's very relationship based. If you think that would be beneficial to find that in your LinkedIn newsfeed from time to time, let's connect. And if after a while you don't like what you see, disconnect, no harm, no foul.

7:10I'm not going to say anything about it. And that has been wildly successful. The other thing is that if I'm going to connect with folks and other clients are seeing this for us as well, is we'll lead with a piece of content. And we won't lead with the promise of, oh, hey, let's connect and then I'll send you content or let's schedule a call and I can share this report with you. We'll lead with true content. You know, I'll do I'm working on a post today that's I'm taking a piece of research and I'm going to summarize it and analyze it. And I will send the summary to all the people that it is truly relevant for.

7:42because it's not truly relevant for everybody that we work with. But for a subsegment, it's going to be very, very relevant. And I'll send it, say, here. And by the way, here's a link to the original research if you want to read everything so that you're not just reading my summation and my take on it. And it works really well. People thank you for it. They either connect with you or, in some cases, they'll connect with you you haven't even asked them to. You're just sending them to research. So again, it goes back to that just, hey, be human, be helpful. People like helpful, right? Because there's not a lot of helpful people in the world.

8:10So when you're one of those people, I think it helps you really stand out. And people at least, they won't delete your message. They won't put it to spam. They'll be like, okay, I need to put that one away and read it later because that guy's usually sending me good stuff. Yeah. It's so fascinating, the disconnect, I think, that happens when we think about how we would behave in a room of people that we'd love to engage with versus how many of us behave on platforms like social media or our email list or whatever, right? It's like, wait a minute. Like, I think the two should be like, if you wouldn't do it in a room, why would you do that in this other electronic platform?

8:54There's, there's no difference. We're talking about humans. And I think that there's that, you know, it's, I don't know, it's just being sloppy. It's just, I have a lot of empathy because I think a lot of us have just been given historically bad advice. And so because we think that that's just what it takes, you have to do uncomfortable sales outreach, because that's just what you're supposed to do in business. And I think a lot of business owners, my opinion, is that that's like the least favorite part of their business, because it just feels uncomfortable. Particularly, I know you wrote a really good article here about introverts in particular, But I think all of us, I don't think any of us wants to be that me monster who walks into a room and is just selling people and slapping business cards in people's hands.

9:42But unfortunately, that's what a lot of us are doing on social and beyond. Well, I think it's because we have been, if you look back at sales training since the beginning of sales training, we're taught that activity equals progress. right more cold calls more emails more business cards in hands and we're taught that quantity is is the equivalent of progress and and i just have never believed it i i value quality i would much rather have five really good conversations of which i'll probably end up closing two to three then a hundred where i might close one because at the end of the day i get the same number of new clients.

10:23I get the same amount of new revenue, but I just do it with a lot less work. And it's just more fun, frankly, because I don't know about you. I hate networking. I hate going to those things because people are all playing business card ninja, right? And it's just not fun. It's not fun. That was always the beauty. I mean, I miss the old days of Twitter when people actually used to talk to one another because I would say most of the contacts I've made in the last 10 years, I can track them all back to the early days of Twitter when we would all sit on tweet chats and we would meet each other and we would start talking.

10:56And then eventually we might meet face to face like this over a video call. Right. And that might be the very first time I see a person's face in real life. But by then I've already got this great relationship. We know so much about each other. We've developed a some level of a friendship to me, like that's what you do. If you're always out there connecting, if you're being helpful, if you're being friendly, it's amazing how often just things show up in your inbox or people show up in your world who are ready to hire you and, and, or at least think you might be a good option. Right. And so to me, it's just a better, it's a better way of doing business and it produces better quality clients, better quality customers, better relationships.

11:36And again, just kind of goes back to, I'm like you, I, I hate that sort of, Oh, hi here, here's my business card. Here's what I can do for you. And I think a lot of people like us, you know, you come out of PR, I come out of advertising. I think people specifically in that creative space, the agency world and so forth, absolutely despise that traditional salesy approach. Yeah, might be why we work with a lot of because they like our approach better than the salesy one. Yeah, the fear and I think you've, Tom, I think you've covered this quite well. But I think the fear is that if I'm not engaged in direct sales activity at all times.

12:12So it's, it's like, they're, it's kind of, they're putting the cart before the horse, right? Because they're trying to get to what they think they're supposed to be doing. When, if you cast a net of love and generosity and connection, right? Just like, you know, for me, I was, in fact, I was just talking with a client right now and we were talking about, you know, listen, you know, follower count, that's a great vanity metric. Like it's, you know, it might make you feel good. I think it is a social signal, right, in terms of authority. But, you know, for me, it's like, you know, it's like what I want is social media for me is about building relationships and treating audiences like adults.

12:55And I think a lot of this stems from being a little bit more empathic to where people are and what their life is like. You know, they're inundated with noise. They're inundated with people selling at them. And so if you can just differentiate yourself and just kind of lean in through the friend door with your content, with your expertise, your service, right? People know. It's what I've said. I'm sorry. This is your interview. No, I'm sorry. But, you know, it's like, I believe that people know what your intention is much, much sooner than you think they realize what your intention is. It's almost like, I think, like we all know when a salesperson's coming up to us and we can kind of feel it coming.

13:40Like, we all have that intuition. Well, guess what? Your audience does too. Your quote unquote leads, which I hate using that word, they know what you're doing. Um, so you may as well just dispense with the charade and just, you know, lean either lean into the relationship and go through the friend door or, you know, just acknowledge it for what it is. Well, it's really funny. I spend a lot of time studying science, neurology, neuroscience and social science and persuasion science, education science, all the things that come into play with how I transfer information to you, how you learn the information, how you hold it, how it becomes persuasive, etc.

14:22And when you look at the science and then you look at what is traditionally thought of as a selling, so many of the techniques that people hammer home and they'd say, well, you've got to do this. It actually flies in the face of the science. The science actually tells you no. Because my big one is people will be like, oh, the person's not saying yes. They're kind of stalling or whatever. And so I've got to keep on them. I've got to keep emailing them. I got to keep calling them and keep putting the pressure on because if I don't, I'll lose the sale. And that actually flies 180 degrees in the face of the science because what the science tells you is that when a person feels like they don't have control of the situation, like they're being forced into a decision, they will just instinctively roadblock.

15:08Like they're going to, it's not even, it's biological. It's not even a thought process. It's just, whoop, I got to push back, which is exactly what you don't want to have happen at that point in a sales process. And so it's really interesting. The more you really dive behind and get out of the whole salesy world and get into the science and how do people build relationships and how do they consume information and how do you build trust and importantly, credibility. We always talk about, oh, like people work with people they know, like trust. People forget there's a fourth one. It's called the people that have actual credibility.

15:37And I think the way you build credibility is, like you said, by not constantly just trying to push people down a pathway. I do a shtick in my in my keynotes and in my workshops, where I do a role play. And I say, Okay, I'm a salesperson, I'm selling you, you asked me a question, I rickety give you an answer. You know, where's your filter? Where's that BS filter? It's always around seven or eight. But then I say, right now you asked me a question, I say, Hey, here's a piece of content and engineer somebody else in my company wrote that answers it. Let me know if that answers your question. If not, we'll go on.

16:10The BS filter drops to three. And like, it is almost like, that's not even the average. That's like, I guess the medium, median number. I mean, it is uncanny. And if you think about it, it's completely illogical. Because if I'm giving you a piece of content, you can darn sure bet it's the most biased, most beneficial to my point of view piece of content, because that's why it exists. Yes, right. But you're, but you as an individual, that's not how you consume it. And again, that's where if you just take if people step back and look at the science and look at how people process you don't have to do all that silliness it's actually not as effective it's just we've been taught for 50 years that it is and we've been taught through movies and stuff that that's how it is and that's how everybody has that sort of type a salesperson uh you know idea in their mind and they think oh i'm an introvert or oh i'm not a type a person i can't be a good salesperson i can't sell it's like now actually you can be really good sometimes more effective just embrace different tools and techniques yeah i would much rather work with an introvert that's going to care about me and it's going to ask me questions about me so that they you know and and they're okay which is like i'm just happy to help you know i may or may not be the best solution for you but i'm happy to help i know quite a bit about this and uh you know maybe i've got a connection for you or you know maybe i can brainstorm with you you talk about tom what i just explained right there like that is like my dream ideal salesperson.

17:37It's let's collectively come up with an idea together. And it may be us engaging today. It may be, well, I'm not the right fit for you, but I'm going to send you somebody because I appreciate your earnest, you know, your earnest kind of attitude to it. You know, I'm sorry. I'm just looking at the clock here. Your website, conversedigital.com. And of course, on your website, you have a link to your book, which is The Invisible Sale, how to build a digitally powered marketing and sales system to better prospect, qualify, and close leads. But Tom, I want to have you share maybe just a bit about who you work with, like who should be reaching out because you could probably help them with some issues in their organization.

18:18Yeah, our primary, our bullseye of a customer is a freelancer, solopreneur, somebody in the creative agency space who, you know, because they either own the company or somehow they've been pulled into the selling process, but they don't really think they're very good at selling. They don't feel comfortable with selling. That's our bullseye. We help those people. I mean, that's what I did in the advertising world. I was director of business development. That's how I started my company. So we show them how can you become known for knowledge? How can you painlessly prospect? And then once you get a conversation, manage that conversation into a way that it actually converts reliably to clients so that you can have the freedom to remain self-employed, but more importantly, have the freedom to work with the clients you want to work with and not just whoever will hire you, which ultimately makes your life just a wee bit more fun and profitable in the long run.

19:07Yeah. Again, Tom Martin, your website, Converse Digital, when somebody goes there, what should they do? What would you recommend? You have some great content on here. Obviously, your book is here, The Invisible Sale. What would you recommend to someone to listen to our conversation? Next steps, where do they go? What do they do? I would go, there's a link on the nav that says what we think. Go there. There's, I don't know, 400 articles. Oh, my goodness. And just read. You know, they can be subdivided by topical area. Read, see what you think. If you feel like, wow, this is helpful, sign up for the newsletter.

19:39And when I publish new stuff, you'll get it. Or sometimes I share other people's stuff, you'll get it. And if you really think we can be helpful, then hit the contact form and just say, you know, let's set up a conversation. One of my old bosses used to say, it never hurts to talk. Yeah. Yeah. Just to tease out a couple of pieces of content here, you got my attention. Here's one. The seven deadly sins of B2B gated content marketing. If you have gated content, you need to read this article. There's a lot. You're right. This is a pretty rich, you have a very rich content library here. So Tom Martin, again, converse digital.com, your book, The Invisible wholesale, how to build a digitally powered marketing and sales system to better prospect qualify and close leads.

20:25Tom, it's been great having you. Thank you so much for joining us. No, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure.

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