Timothy Hughes - Unleash The Power Of Social Selling

Jim Fuhs [00:00:01]:
10 Qs is a universally recognized as the world's leading pioneer and innovative of social selling. Currently ranked number 1 by Analytica as the most influential social selling person in world. In 2021, LinkedIn said he was one of the top 8 sales experts globally to follow and brand 24 announced recently he was a 16th most influential person in marketing globally based on measured social media influence. He's also the cofounder and CEO

Jim Fuhs [00:00:32]:
of DLA Ignite, and co author of the bestselling books, social selling, techniques to influence buyers and changemakers, and marketing, how to achieve competitive advantage through blended sales and marketing, and he's recently launched a second edition of the social settling

Jim Fuhs [00:00:45]:
technique to influencers, buyers and changemakers, which has been fully updated, and all three books are published by Kogan Page and are available here on Amazon. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome I guess we'd say record fanatic Timothy Hughes.

Timothy Hughes [00:01:07]:
Hi. How are you doing?

Chris Stone [00:01:09]:
Hey. Doing well, Tim.

Timothy Hughes [00:01:11]:
Doing well. Should we call you -- Mister Baker, basic technology, isn't it? Isn't it amazing that we're able to use -- Right. stuff and transmitter everywhere. That's amazing.

Chris Stone [00:01:20]:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, 10 years ago, this is just like, you know, it was a dream, really. And and people were cobbling it together with 56 k Baud modems, and here we are just clicking buttons and talking to you while you're hanging out with a gramophone. This is amazing.

Timothy Hughes [00:01:36]:
And and, you know, I'm I'm in London. You're you're in the state somewhere and -- Yep. Yes.

Jim Fuhs [00:01:42]:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You're You're, you know, you're you're in the in the early evening. I mean, with this could this is something we could not have pulled off 10 years ago. I don't I don't even know if we could have pulled it off 5 years ago. I think it would have been tough. I mean, it was starting. You know? I think with Facebook lives, but this is you know, now I I love that we're on LinkedIn for 1. I mean, because that's where I know a lot of your influences, and I think it's it's become between Twitter. Twitter and linkedin are, like, the two places I I like to hang out. I I think you do a bit of that as well, Tim, don't you?

Timothy Hughes [00:02:15]:
Yeah. From a business perspective, Frutta and LinkedIn are probably my 2 main social networks.

Jim Fuhs [00:02:21]:
Yep. And and so, Tim, let's let's kinda well, tell tell us tell us a little bit more about yourself. I mean, what got you to where you are today. I mean, what what brought you into this whole world of social selling?

Timothy Hughes [00:02:35]:
Well, I'm a salesperson. I've been in sales for 25 years. And back in probably

Jim Fuhs [00:02:41]:
2012,

Timothy Hughes [00:02:42]:
2013, I decided I didn't wanna do what I was doing, which is cell accounting systems. They're a big major US software company, and I wanted to do something else. And I was looking around for stuff. And someone suggested where one leader, Pam, my manager basically said, we need to get on social media. This is where it's gonna be out. And I started working on it, and I've been on Twitter for 14 years. And I've set up the Allegnite in 2016 with my business partner Adam Gray. So we've now been working and and all we do is work in social media for business to business companies or entrepreneurs, small businesses, big businesses, whatever. And and that's what we do is we help them with their social and not social fluffy, fluffy, puffy, all we do is it has to be a revenue connection. So whatever we do with an organization, it's about generating lead to meetings or conversations because conversations are the things that create sales. And, ultimately, what that does is a generator.

Chris Stone [00:03:48]:
Yeah. It's an interesting thing is that, you know and and I what I'd I'd love to be able to start at social selling because that's why that's why we're here. But, I mean, pursuant to what you just said, I think a lot of people when they look at social media, They think of it purely as marketing. They think of it as, like, I've got this stuff going on, and I know I need to be on social media. I know I need to be on LinkedIn and YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and all of the things. Right? I gotta put my real estate there. Right? And but It's really just about trumpeting. Right? It's about I it's just about putting stuff out and letting it sit there and using it as sort of, like, a free advertising. as opposed to actually treating it like a social media platform and engaging with people because a lot of people look at it as pure marketing. But you're looking at it as a way to actually translate that into sales for organizations. It's it's it's a bridge piece. How do you do that with businesses of varying levels?

Timothy Hughes [00:04:50]:
Well, we just just to reiterate what you said, I mean, we're talking to at the moment 2 ultra conservative organizations. And the way they see social media, it really is about how can we take all the brochures and the white papers that we've created that nobody reads in any of the other places that they put them. And how come what we'll do is we'll put them on social media And what they hope is that people go, oh, it's amazing a brochure. Wow. I've not seen one of those before. Why would you do that? Wow. That's amazing. Can I buy 5, please? And, of course, it doesn't work like that anymore. We're all in situations where we don't read brochures. We're not interested in that. You know, we're on social media. We're on social media to have conversations, and that's what our our research shows. So what what we find is that people miss the don't join the dots and actually see, right, okay. What we're gonna do is we're gonna what I need to do is post something on social media, then the job's done. I basically walk away. Whereas, actually, what we're trying to do is actually you know, we're a business. We're trying to make money. To to answer your question, you know, what we've done is that we we develop the methodology, and we know that if you do step 1, step 2, step 3, and and and step 4 will be that you'll sell something. And we've got customers that do multi 1000000 dollar deals on. So should we go? And so if people are not doing multimillion dollar deals on social media, they're leaving money on the day.

Chris Stone [00:06:21]:
multi $1,000,000 deals that were originated from a social media platform. So, like, the people are just kinda chiming in saying, hey. What's this about, and then it's engaging kind of like a CRM sort of sort of deal where it it translates into actually doing a multimillion dollar deal. Yes. So so

Timothy Hughes [00:06:42]:
give you the example. What we what what the data shows now is that people use People use search, but they also use social media to search for products and and brands. Right. You know, your podcast is a great example kind of proves the point that, you know, people are looking for are on social media looking for advice. They're looking for Yeah. Your intro is just a fantastic, you know, yeah, what better than than playing with gadgets and stuff all day. But people are looking for that. They're looking for social proof. And the data now shows that people under age of thirty actually use social media to look for brands and products more than they use search. So people come to social big people will come well, generally, do the 2 together. So they'll do your search for something on maybe Google. and you'll search for something on social media. Now the thing about Google is it actually doesn't give us the answers that we want. So if we put in and say, what's a couple of Nigeria, it will give us the answer. But if you go to Google and type in, what's the best CRM system in the world? It doesn't give you an answer. because what will happen is that 10,000 CRM vendors will basically buy the search. Right. Whereas what will happen if you come to social media is that you will get people's advice. So, you know, you may you you may find the show, or you may find someone's blog or someone post or someone's request. Now when people come to social media, they're like you and me, which is We we pick up a mobile phone. And if you go to LinkedIn, you'll go boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, woring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring. That's interesting. Now So the point of being on social media is to offer insights and not to be the part of the boring. Now every marketer that I talk to always say we're not boring. We're part of the we we're offering insight. Even though what they're doing is that they're putting out brochures or brochureware and basically saying the fit same thing as all they compare which is by my truck because we're great. Now we're all sophisticated buyers. We we we know if it's a brochure or if brochure where it's just gonna say how great the product is. What we're looking for is insight. Tell me something I don't know. Tell me Tell me you, show me you understand your the business issues -- Yeah. -- of my industry or my organization. And and and explain to me how you can solve them. Not in a a a brochure way, but actually the our research shows the more authentic you are, And the more that you lean into that, the better response that you'll get. So we know that our buyers are on We know that they're on social media. 60% of the world's population, 59.9%. Of the world's population is active on social media. And when I mean active, they spend an average of 2 hours, 25 minutes a day on social media. So that's not just posting pictures on lit on Facebook that shows the people are active. When you go to the LinkedIn as you you do, you know the people are are active there. So -- Yeah. -- all happen is that you go, you scroll through, and you go, that looks interesting. That that that person looks something they know what they're talking about. And, you know, we have instances where people of buyers have found someone Manny's sellers said you look interesting. Can you help me with this? And I can explain to you for your listeners how you will get this magic happening. And we'll and what happens is that they will walk towards you. The buyers will walk towards you and say, can you help me? And we've had lots of instances where that's happened, where that's turned into multimillion dollar deals.

Chris Stone [00:10:40]:
Wow. Do you feel like a lot of these companies, especially with the rise of what we'll call them influencers, other people call them advocates there's all kinds of different words for it. But people that don't necessarily work for a particular company, but are endorsing something. Do you feel like this is also affecting social selling in terms of how a business now looks at, okay, we're we're attacking this from, you know, we've got people that our work for our company that are representing our products or service. but we also need to look at other people who are using our products and services and having them do that on our behalf.

Timothy Hughes [00:11:21]:
What are your thoughts there on influencer market? Yes. Well, there's there's different type types of influences into on social media. So you've got Kim Kardashian, which is In effect, what she's doing is it it's it's it's it's no different from the way that advertising has worked for the last 100 years really, which is you get someone famous, you think about a TV ad. You get someone famous to sell Martini, And you all of a sudden, your you know, the the product sells. In a b to b context, it's a little bit more subtler because we're not necessarily looking at the fact that Kim's got Gucci shoes on or something like that, which she she's been given. Yeah. What what we are looking for is social proof. Yeah. All of us are influences in some shape or form. You know, Yeah. Whether we yeah. What was that restaurant you went to? You you told me, when you're in New York, what restaurant would you recommend? I wanted a really good Italian in London. Well, yeah, where's the best chip shop in in in London? All of those things is you're asking an opinion. And, therefore, you're basically sharing your influence. And I think that people are looking for that level of social proof. And and that's where we start getting outside mobilizing the Salesforce, which is kind of easy to do because they're motivated to do to to go out onto social. and form relationships with people and and, hopefully, that will lead to some sort of sale. But we're also mobilizing other people in the organization around maybe yeah. If you're selling a technical product, what you'll do is you may actually have, yeah, if you're all selling a cybersecurity product. What you do is you might wanna put the your cybersecurity experts out on social media because technical people will find technical people. And and, you know, in technical people, there's a there's a kind of a hierarchy of of trust. And and that's where as a buyer, I'm looking for an organization that I can I can form a relationship with, and it's not just about sales, but it's also about finding people of influence. And I and I the way that you, you know, influence and marketing is still very immature. And I think that people are still It might it might be people still tend to use it as as paid media, which is I'll pay somebody and I'll and, you know, I'll pay Tim and he'll come on and say, oh, look at the iPhone. It's really wonderful. I read, you know, and and and and, actually, you know, we're we're sophisticated buyers nowadays, and we just don't believe in that sort of stuff. Whereas there can be some more you know, what you do is in in this show is that you offer a far more subtlety in terms of the the the products that you're you're looking at. And that and what you're doing is that you're using your expertise because you're both experts. to actually say this is a product. And therefore, some you go, well, if if it's okay for Chris, I'm with AD knows about broadcasting mean, Kristen is more part about podcasting than I do. Right? Then I'm gonna buy it.

Chris Stone [00:14:20]:
Yeah. So -- And I think -- -- if you were to recommend a Pink Floyd album,

Jim Fuhs [00:14:23]:
then I would basically buy it from you. That's that's the way that that's the way that works. There we go. Oh, there you go. That's I can't go wrong with it. -- favorite one. For those of you that don't know what that is, that's the dark side of the moon. So

Chris Stone [00:14:37]:
Greatestly.

Jim Fuhs [00:14:38]:
We should we should put that in the I need to add that to the carousel. I'm sure it's available on on Amazon. But, Tim, one one of the questions too and and Chris and I think running this from time to time with some of our clients that they're on LinkedIn. But I think, you know, one I'd say they need to get your book. is that they're broadcasting on LinkedIn. And they're like, well, why am I not getting any engagement? Right? And it's like, Well, if all you're doing is posting and talking about yourself, nobody cares. Right?

Timothy Hughes [00:15:10]:
So we've got a definition of of social selling, which I'll I'll read out for you, which is that it's and I've gotta read it off the wall, which is why my uncle -- Yeah. -- it's it's using your presence and behavior on social media. to build influence, make connections grow relationships and trust, which lead to conversations and commercial interaction. And and what you're and and what most people do on social media is that they think that the output is a post So I will go to social media, and I'm gonna post something, and then they walk away. And, actually, the outputs on social media is a conversation. Mhmm. And and because because it's the conversation, especially if you're work if if you're working in B2B or where your b to c, but it requires a a the person to have a to actually think about purchase like buying a BMW or something like that. If you're gonna spend $50,000, it's a considered purchase. If you're doing anything like that, When you but most people when they buy a BMW will actually walk into a showroom and actually talk to a salesperson or if you're buying cybersecurity software or whatever it is, surprise you to have a conversation. So what you're looking for is to get to that conversation. Now We have an example of of one of the people in the team. They did a number of things which I can talk to you about about They put out a post, which is a picture of their son and him on the beach because it it was his son's birthday. And they put those pictures out. It took 5 minutes to basically take photos, 15 minutes in terms to put that out. And he got off the back of that 6 c level meetings. 2 proposals and one purchase order, and it took 15 minutes to do. Now that's the sort of thing that I'm talking about is a is about using your so using social. And social media is the ability to use your presence and behavior, to build influence and trust, grow relationships, and therefore, get conversations which lead to commercial interaction. Now We're not saying that we're anti telephone, and we're not saying that all of the the connection or or the conversation has to take place on social media. Not at all. In fact, what you're doing is that you're using social media as your ability to get the Zoom call, the discovery call, or whatever whatever. But it's about getting those conversations, and it's about getting those conversations at scale, which you can do. And if you want me to go into our data versus cold calling, I'm more than to you today.

Chris Stone [00:17:47]:
I would love to hear that. I would Jim's Jim's missed. Jim loves cold calling, Tim. I I love when you when you talked about that definition. The first thing you said it leads to is not money, is not revenue, the conversations. and you just alluded to it right there. And I think a lot of do you think, Tim, that a lot of people, when they are posting on social media and they're they have their business hat on, so to speak, or, like, my intention is to try to get more business. that they wanna feel more buttoned up and that they're they're they're kinda reticent to show themselves, like, to peel back the curtain so to speak and say this is me. Is is is that the reason why people are are a little bit more hesitant to be a little more transparent and vulnerable in in this world to lead to those conversations?

Timothy Hughes [00:18:39]:
I I think that people are scared of social media, and they're scared often of doing the wrong thing. And what we found yeah. We've done research in terms of looking at different posts, and we know what posts get the most interaction. Now interaction likes and comments are really important because first and foremost it shows digital resonance. It shows your what you're creating is resonating with the audience that you're putting out. And what you want to do is make sure that digital resonance is coming from the people that you want to influence. Now those people you may want to influence may be the people you're trying to sell to, or maybe it's you you you know, there may be people in that organization. You know? For example, one of the companies that we work with is a supply chain software company. and they reckon that they have a 100 stakeholders per se. So that requires you to influence a hundred people and get round and talk to all of those people. They'll You what you what could the what your audience may have may have less stakeholders, but Gartner reckon that the average deal nowadays, especially in B2B, have 10 stakeholders. So there's a lot of people that you've gotta get rounded influence. And you've gotta do that at scale because you don't have a lot of time. And certainly not bringing people up because the best thing you wanna do is start a relationship with somebody by annoying them. So so you you asked me about you asked me about content. Sorry. I'll just just -- So Yes. So 1st and foremost, it's about a conversation. So it's not about it's not about posting. If the the more human you can and the more authentic you can be, the more people actually enjoy it. If you're posting brochures, You know, if you go to your post and you find that nobody's liking it, it's, you know, it's a it's a you you can measure how well you're doing on social media by how many likes you get and how many comments yet. You know? If so if if no one's liking it, no one likes it. And and and and And if you're just posting brochures, what you're doing is that you're probably actually training the algorithm to get people to ignore you. And so -- Mhmm. People people want to see something about you.

Jim Fuhs [00:21:00]:
Now one of the things that often we come across is people say, I

Timothy Hughes [00:21:04]:
it's LinkedIn is a business network. I'm only gonna post things about business. Here you go. Right. Okay. Well, regardless of my research that shows that people don't wanna see that. You you say to somebody okay. So, Pam, when do you wanna win a sale? What do you do? They say, well, I I take my customers to this to sports game or to a meal. And he go, okay. That's that's good. So what do you do? Do you take brochures along and read them out? And they say, don't don't be so stupid because I don't do that. What I do is I get to know them. I get to know that they have a family, and they have barbecues. They've got a neuro disabled son or something like that. I I like to get to know them, and I say, well, exactly. That's what we we come to social media. because it's social media. And what we're looking for is is to form a connection with somebody. And the more that we can see somebody for who they are, then the better it is. Now if I if you come to my LinkedIn profile and it's all I do is a post pictures of me and my son on the beach, you're gonna assume I'm a server. Like but but so so when I come to your LinkedIn profile, I need to know what you stand for. But the thing is is that posting human content is is today's digital way of prospecting. Alright. And and for understanding what that person is about, just as much as no. We have Yeah. I have things in my background deliberately to start and form conversations, and I know you do as well, Chris, because we were on a a panel together and you told me about how you were doing that. And and that's, you know, that what we that's what we're trying to do always with people online is form a conversation. My business partner has guitars behind him because he's a a guitar player. And it's just amazing the amount of business that we get in in our company from people who are guitar players.

Chris Stone [00:23:01]:
Yeah. We have we have a lot folks that are chiming in here on on all of the all of the tubes as we as we say. Pink Floyd, Phil Hill, Phil Hill knows smart home tech in the house. Thanks for thanks for joining us, Phil. He's a Pink Floyd fan. and he even gets Pink Floyd way up in the hills of Wisconsin, believe it or not. And speaking of surfing, Ladies and gentlemen, Mitch Jackson is in the house, the streaming lawyer, the metaverse lawyer, the everything lawyer. He wants to know what's the best chip shop.

Timothy Hughes [00:23:39]:
I don't know. Frito Lay? I I like that I think that might be a question for you too. -- where the Chitch Choppes in London. I can't tell you the name of it, but I know it's in it's in Soho. But -- Okay. -- I can I can I've been googling after the the the show. It's a it's a big expensive, but it's the best one.

Jim Fuhs [00:23:56]:
There you go.

Chris Stone [00:23:57]:
Excellent. And for those of you who are joining us on on Amazon, Rocketman, and others. Thank you for joining. If anyone has any questions for Timothy Hughes, the author of social selling here. We have the man live here at least for the next few minutes or so. And so so, Timothy, the the book you tell me is doing quite well and so I'm curious because, you know, we talked about it when we were when we were doing the the introduction. here is, like, how do you stay abreast of this stuff? Because it's basically like drinking water out of the fire hose in terms of, like, keeping up with all of the social media and, you know, everything has a social element. Any new platform has got a way for someone to kinda engage and that looks like an opportunity for a business to to to be in whether it's, you know, whether it's TikTok or whether it's podcasting or whether All of this stuff is is just happening so quickly. How do you stay abreast of of all of this and you you're able to turn around second edition and basically bolt on another 100 percent of of value onto the first edition Walk us through, like, how you stay abreast of this and then be able to to deliver what you need to deliver to everyone.

Timothy Hughes [00:25:25]:
So the the first edition came out I wrote it in 2015, so it's quite a long time ago in social media terms. Mhmm. And it has a 187 pages. Really, I was working in corporate. We rolled out social selling across four thousand people in Europe. And, really, it was about taking the contents of my head and putting it out. And thank you, Philip. And what we did what what we did with the second edition was we set up our business DLA 19 23rd. in 2016. So what we did was that we've taken the last 6, 7 years of learnings from implementing people. And what we've done is that we've poured that into the book. So they the the latest edition is 306 pages. But People still think that social selling is some sort of future state that we that we get to in a number of years. So, actually, What I did was I reached out to a whole bunch of people that are doing this already. So a client of our Cyber Hawk who are a drones company Telstra, RingCentral, NAMOS, which is an Oracle consulting, Mercer Ericsson, plus a headhunter friend of mine and said, You're doing social at the moment. You're doing it really well. Give me some advice that we can put into the board. So the best example is that is Chris Fleming who CEO of Cyberhawk, who decided to turn his business into a digital business. But come excuse me. And He realizes that for him as a business to get into the organizations that he wants to, like Saudi Aramco, wish your organizations that you you you you know, most people to get into Saudi Aramco. which is the the petrol company of the of Saudi Arabia. You would have to go to Saudi Arabia. You would have to set up a a office then would cost 2,000,000, but he's got business out of them by being on social. He's also doubled the size of his organization from a people perspective. and he's done that purely through using social. Now he decided to be a digital business 2 years ago. So if you're not a digital business now, you're already 2 years behind. Yeah. To to answer your question, what we decided when we said something business was not to be a bill an end all, everything to do with sales or marketing. We're not a marketing agency. We're not a sales training company. We just focus in on using social media for sales and marketing and how to drive revenue from it. That that's what we do. And, of course, Adam and I just fanatical about it. So you know, I listen to people like you guys. I, you know, spend a lot of my time reading other people's art schools. And so you you you you just end up absorbing it as much as you can. Yeah. And and then then turning that into our own view, which is You you know, we so, you know, let's take this. Before we came on the wall, we talked about live podcasting like this. You know, we started I started podcast in 2016. We started a a podcast to LinkedIn live in

Jim Fuhs [00:28:48]:
in 2021.

Timothy Hughes [00:28:51]:
And, really, that was about testing it out, experimenting. So that when our customers come to us and say, we're thinking about doing a podcast or we're thinking about doing a LinkedIn life. How do we do it? were able to say, you know, and and explain how to do it and the the business benefit of doing it. Mhmm. So, you know, with full time I'm a full time

Chris Stone [00:29:14]:
social media nerds. So -- Sure. Well, I I think that's that's key is that a lot of people, they're in the business of something, but they don't they don't have their own sandbox. Right? And so, like, to your point, it's like you're doing a podcast because you wanna be able to work with other companies based on that podcast and how you're applying the the techniques because you're actually in it. You're not just talking about it. You're actually carrying the bag. And I think that was important for Jim and I when we started deal casters is like, we're remote producers. We help people do shows. We need our own show. And so that was it. That would that was and so, like, when we talk about tech all the time, why don't we just do it on Amazon and see see how this thing works? or and -- And anybody who works for DLA 9, we we say to her that that they're the the high watermark of what social selling should look like. Mhmm.

Timothy Hughes [00:30:07]:
And so, you know, people should come and look at our LinkedIn profile, see what we're doing. You know, if you look at my LinkedIn profile, you will see it is very different other people's. My summary title is very different from from other people's. And, you know, so so Yeah. We we walk the walk, and we talk at all. Yeah. And we think that's so important. So we you know, the only way that you are going to be the best is by demonstrating that yourself.

Jim Fuhs [00:30:36]:
Yeah. And and I wanted to too, Tim, I I because I definitely wanna get to the the part about what you've seen with cold calling. But even with email marketing, you look at things completely differently than you probably did before and you discussed that a little bit in the book.

Timothy Hughes [00:30:55]:
Yes. So we're quite rep you know, we're our belief is that advertising, email marketing, and cold calling doesn't work anymore. And I think if you look at the the way that the layoffs are taking place right now in tech, and everyone's saying that they haven't got any pipeline. And the reason why they don't have any pipeline is because they're using advertising, email marketing, and co calling. And, you know, what what we've seen is that over the last 10 years is all of these things, you know, gradually are getting less and less and less and less. You know, last time I looked to a report about email marketing, they're not talking about open rates. You know, they don't well, they don't talk about revenue that's generated. It's have they somebody actually opened it. Yeah. Now and and and they've actually moved that even further up to me and say, did did the email actually land in someone's inbox? Yeah. And, you know, what do I do when I get an an an an email in my inbox? I just create a rule, and it goes into the waste paper basket. Sometimes, I'm going to write to a basket, and there's people saying, you haven't responded to the email 1? No. Of course.

Jim Fuhs [00:31:59]:
I mean, the institute -- I can ask. -- for it. What what what Centrue do you come from? You know, even marketing was designed in 19 90. You know, it's it's you know, Is it thirty years old? Cold calling is

Timothy Hughes [00:32:13]:
forty years old. You know, there's people that are younger than that using these technologies, and and they all know they don't work.

Jim Fuhs [00:32:21]:
Right. But they're told they have to do it by their boss because they're positive. Yeah. You have to make more calls. You have to send more notes, really. I mean, it's 2023.

Timothy Hughes [00:32:29]:
So you're gonna ask me about the the figures. So I'll tell you. So we took a team of people who were cold callers, and we train them in social site. This is on the 1st January, January 2023. They were cold calling agency, and we said, we'll train you in social selling, and you will do cold outreach using social selling. Now this is not using automation. It's not connecting pitch. There's no spam or anything like that. This is this is about going to people and them wanting to end up having a conversation. And we're currently getting a 9% response. Right? So every hundred people we connect to, we get 9% of people saying, we'll take a call. Now whenever you do cold calling, the the objective is to get some sorts of next action, which is usually like a discovery call, a demo, or something like that. We're now getting

Jim Fuhs [00:33:25]:
30 33.6

Timothy Hughes [00:33:27]:
percent of those 9% of people basically saying that the hyphen edition. a a next action. No. This is exponential. And, yeah, this is this is this blows cold cooling out of the water once and for all. And this is not my opinion, this is the data. Now -- Right. -- I write about this all the time. If anyone is watching this and is interested, My blogs for the last I don't know. Last 5 months have basically carried this data. It explains in the in the blogs Who is it that's doing? You can go to their LinkedIn profiles. You can see. You can go and ask them. This is not something that we've created in some sort of ivory tower. These are real salespeople. doing doing social selling. When we get to 6 months, which is now just about just about We'll have 6 months' worth of data in it. We're we're actually gonna start seeing links in terms of the way that we can actually connect the dots around sales and marketing. So we're gonna bring out some more information around that. You know, this is this is exponential. You know, anybody is cold calling. you're not using the the the most efficient and effective way of connecting to people from cold outreach. But

Chris Stone [00:34:42]:
Yeah. You're tripling the numbers, essentially. Right?

Timothy Hughes [00:34:45]:
True. True. Absolutely. You you know, if you know, when when these people were so I'm cold calling, They were getting 2 meetings of the week and sorry. 2, yeah, 2 calls a week, and they would get a null point 3% conversion rate. So they -- Wow. -- change that to

Jim Fuhs [00:35:02]:
9% 33%.

Timothy Hughes [00:35:04]:
Each of the salespeople gets 10 meetings a week. Now these are average figures. So we have so we have salespeople that are getting more than this, and some salespeople that are getting less because they're an STR with 2 years' experience. but we're but but these are average figures. So you you roll that out across the whole of your organization. Your pipeline problems go away. You start you can stop laying people up and start taking people on. Right. And and and this is the this is the the the, you know, sales and marketing has changed. And it's changed for the digital world. You know, mobile, internet, social media, and COVID 19 have changed the way that we sell and market. And anybody who's using cold calling, email marketing, advertising, you're living in the past. And it it it I'm sorry, but It's over, and we've got the figures in the page of this show.

Chris Stone [00:35:59]:
Yeah. I you know, the the thing that keeps on every time you're you're bringing up all of all of the data, the thing that keeps that I keep thinking about is so many people, businesses, content entrepreneurs, a lot of this audience they blame everything on the algorithms. Right? And they and they say, oh, well, you know, I keep I tried this and, you know, this this short got, like, 3000 views and this other one got 13 and, like and and, you know, and then they just kinda throw up their hands and say, well, Somebody else is pulling the strings. There's these algorithms, but what you've done at your company is you're like, listen, there is real data here. that we can acquire and understand and pull it apart and be really truly analytical about this. Instead of giving up on it, you can work with other companies and say, Listen, you know, the algorithm is what the algorithm is and they're and we're never gonna be able to see the secret sauce. Right? They're never gonna be able to tell you what, you know, exactly they're doing. But it's out there for us to analyze, and there are companies that are, you know, doing this all of this, you know, analytics that clearly you guys are subscribing to, and you're utilizing it with your businesses. And I think it's ridiculously intelligent.

Timothy Hughes [00:37:15]:
You're right. Chris, you know, in terms of if you're chasing the algorithm, you're not doing the right thing. Mhmm. You know, we you know, the mod The modern buyer is a particular way. You know, we're pissed off with all of this outreach and this this this constant onslaught of of of interruption. You know, interruption marketing is is dead. None of us want it, and, you know, the the the the faster people realize it. and actually realize that the modern buyer is like us. They're looking for insights. They're looking for you know, tell me something I don't know. It's actually bigger than this, which is we've only been talking about the modern bark because we're talking about social selling. the modern job hunter. You know, what's it? A study career art based he said that 96% of job seekers use social media. Now I don't know what the other 4% do because I would have thought it'd be a 100%. Like, you know, modern job the modern the modern job hunter, the modern buyer, the modern investor Everybody's on digital. We all transferred to digital at through through COVID. And if you're looking to be if you're looking for conversations to generate revenue, if you're looking for investments, if you're looking for to be the employer of choice in your marketplace, then you need to be on social media, and you need to be offering people what they want, which is to to to find out about you. So one of our clients, for example, doesn't spend any money on Recruitment advertising or recruitment consultants. Now go back 12 months ago when before people started being laid off. when you couldn't get staff. They had no problem finding staff because what was happening is that they'd empowered their team to go out on to social and talk Not in a brochure way, but talk about you know, I'm I'm I'm attending our our course today on diversity and inclusion. It's so diversity is is embedded in our in our DNA. It's so important. or talk about the importance of their ESG policy or something like that. And when people are going and going boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, Well, they'll get go is they'll they'll go, that looks like a company I wanna work. And then and then another another that that's exactly who I wanna work for. And so and so what you'll do is that that what that what what's happening is that they're attracting people who want to work, which is a different type of job hunter than the a person who may be may be out of work. And so this is you know, using social is about a strategy. A strategy that you you you implement from a from a sea level perspective because we know that social is now the way that people interact. You're doing this by creating an amazing piece of content. You know the people are there. You know the people are gonna tune in and watch this. You know the people are interested in your opinion in your expertise. It's it's just a great example of of of social and how you can use it. You get I mean, you you you work for you you you do producing. So your customers must understand that being able to reach out to people and and talk to their prospects and their buyers in this wedge is such a powerful, a powerful way. And having a podcast in your portfolio of content is a is a such an amazing way of reaching out and contacting people. You know, I use a podcast because I can ring up c level people and say, would you like to come on podcast? And they go, yeah. Perfect. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where whereas you do you know, do you wanna buy some social selling? No. Go away. You know? Right. It's You know, it's it's it's it's it's just perfect. And that's what people want. They don't want this onslaught of this of all this of all this rubbish. They wanna be treated like human beings. And and this is just a social is just an amazing way of connecting with people and

Chris Stone [00:41:33]:
getting conversation to people. I love that you went there with podcasts. You just I you just checked 3 of my questions that I was going to ask you in in one answer. Tim, which was which is just amazing. But, you know, I have one client of mine that I do remote podcast for and there whole intention is I'm having guests on this podcast to see whether or not we can do business together. And it creates mostly good content and it sometimes leads to business. Sometimes it doesn't, but it's a qualified disqualified thing. So that's the way sales works. It's like You don't sometimes you don't know whether or not you can do business with person until you have a conversation with them. And then when you do have that conversation, it just turns into content that you can use. to show other people the conversation that you did have. And it's a it's a tremendous way to do that. I'm gonna turn this into a question. and take a little bit of a of a turn. But like, you've talked thank you for this. This is just like incredibly valuable, practical advice for people that really want to have an intentional understanding of how they treat social because I think, like, the value of social may just kind of like, well, let me just spit this out here and spit this out there, spit this out here. But if you look at it like you do in a tactical manner and you know, tactically try to have conversations with people. He and it it's just gonna turn into something to where, you know, they're too busy buying. what you've got to sell, and that's that's really where you want want to be. But looking towards the future, How do you see social selling evolving? And, like, maybe some some things for the audience that they may want to be prepared for because there's a, you know, this thing's a a fire hose. We're trying to drink out of water out of this thing. things are changing all of the time and evolving. Do you see where it might be headed in the future and maybe some opportunities that we may wanna take advantage of?

Timothy Hughes [00:43:31]:
Yes. Video is at, yeah, podcasting or Short videos is is something that's the people need to get involved in. I started the podcast in 20 6 because I come from a generation where we did have didn't have video cameras. You know, the we had a camera, and it was things where you took a photo and it went on a film and then you put the you're putting in a cupboard. Whereas, you know, we we will now have mobile phones and we have instantaneous and and kind of why photos and video are kind of throw away. But it's the way that people are consuming content. And and the the ability to have and and the knowledge within the organization of do to do live streams and understand how how that works. not to have scripts, how to have have but to understand the technology. We've actually just started one with the institute of sales professionals, which is the sales trade body here in the UK and globally. And we do it Tuesday morning, so early in the morning for and morning for you. And the idea is that we invite sales leaders on them. We talk about what what do they you know, what's what what's keeping them awake at night. And and, of course, you know, every week, we talk to a new sales leader. Every week, the sales leader says says to me. So what do you do? This is why I do social selling. There's hell to me about that. up. And, you know, you're you're, you know, you you're demonstrating the urine experts. So people are seeing it out there. You're talking to people and you're remaining up to date, which again is about expertise, and you're using this as an ability to have conversations with people about what they're doing, and ultimately, they will always turn around to you and say, so what do you do? Sure videos, you know, not not necessarily TikTok, but with short videos. People consume content in in that way. And I now do 2 short videos a week. 1 serious 1 not so serious. So I I'm doing a series about great grandfather's gramophone. Oh, cool. And so well yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I did it it doesn't get a lot of engagements on LinkedIn, but it does on other platforms. And and But, yeah, I mean, that's that's one of the ways. AI is probably gonna change things. But at the moment, all all AI is doing is creating boring content that nobody reads. And and and it's it's quite funny because there's a lot of people kinda said, if there was only something that would write the content for me, I'd put more out. So now there is something that will write the content for them, and they still don't put any content out. Yeah. And this -- Well, we've got a lot more mediocre content. Right. And they're totally invisible to their clients. Yeah. So 90 at 99% of companies right now, totally invisible to their clients on speaker. and they don't you know, and their answer to it is what we're gonna get some boring content. Yeah.

Chris Stone [00:46:44]:
Yeah. It still takes a human on that AI stuff, ladies and gentlemen. And and, you know, I I we're all using it, you know, to a to a degree. but I haven't found something to where, you know, you can completely rubber stamp it and say, this is exactly what I would have said And, you know, it's it's you've really gotta add your your human element to it because I think people can smell it out. -- on talk custom.

Timothy Hughes [00:47:10]:
So so my business partner -- Random. Yeah. He writes in a in a in a very Well, I you know, he writes in a lighthearted but business format. And he put out this block, and I put in the first paragraph, I fell asleep. I don't think he did. I have to. It's like -- Get in mind. Yeah. And at the end, it said, oh, I got ChatGPT too right now. I thought, oh, there you go. You know, what what we are we're we're looking with something that's gonna pull us in. Chat to. Chat to. He doesn't do that. It just so I I actually run a podcast on on artificial intelligence because I didn't know anything about it. So I thought, you know, let's walk towards it. And Chat TPT, what it does is it tries to second guess the next word, except it can do it in in it can second guess the next couple of words. Mhmm. You can't even write code very well. So but, you know, boring concept. Do we need more of that? Well, we I think anyone

Chris Stone [00:48:04]:
can do a podcast. Anyone can do content, but not everyone can do a good podcast and not everyone can create great content. And I think you gotta be tactical like like Timothy Hughes, author of social selling. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have not picked up this book yet, I feel sorry for you. But But, Tim, this is flown flown flown by, and I truly -- I I've looked at this thing from thank you so much.

Jim Fuhs [00:48:37]:
We should do it again sometime when when you race

Timothy Hughes [00:48:40]:
yeah. Oh, I'll bring some fish and chips. Awesome. There you go. Our friend, Mitch,

Chris Stone [00:48:45]:
a friend Mitch will

Jim Fuhs [00:48:47]:
will like that because he I want some opening a different French pink floor, Dabo. There you go.

Chris Stone [00:48:53]:
Wish you were here is is my it's one of my favorites. So so we've what we we didn't talk about 78 records. Did we Not yet.

Timothy Hughes [00:49:05]:
With with the with with his mom's do look at that. His his mom's just -- Oh, there's nipper looking into the gramophone there.

Jim Fuhs [00:49:12]:
You didn't know that that was the name of the dog, did you, Jim? That's Nipper, r c s. That's Nipper. Yeah. Nipper the dog. I knew the dog. I didn't know its name. So now I've I've learned something new. I learned something new every day.

Timothy Hughes [00:49:23]:
That's to mention everything we learned on this -- So so the video I put out last week and and that don't wanna bore you is that do you know where the term put a sock in it came

Chris Stone [00:49:33]:
I'm assuming that it means put a sock in the in the may in the phone there. Yeah. Yes. So there's there's no volume control on it.

Timothy Hughes [00:49:41]:
Or you the the volume is controlled by the the the needle, and they're steel needles.

Jim Fuhs [00:49:46]:
Mhmm. And it's you can get loud needles, deep needles, or soft

Timothy Hughes [00:49:50]:
needles. And and the idea is you put a socket in it, and it makes it quiet. And that was my that was my that that was the video I did last week. Now Now is is that is that is that not is is it is it business? No. Is it unprofessional? No.

Chris Stone [00:50:10]:
No. And it's interesting. I mean, I listen. I'm I'm almost embarrassed that I haven't seen that, but I'm I'm going to at timothheusone on all the platforms and following this stuff so I can see you put a sock in that thing. I'm doing that right now. And ladies and gentlemen, it's also dlaignite.com. And of course, we're here talking about the book, social selling. If you have not picked it up, we're here on Amazon. You can click it down there in the in the carousel. And, of course, we'll have the links in in the show notes as well. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks again for for joining us on on deal casters today, social selling, unleashing social selling with Timothy Hughes. Timothy, thank you so much for joining us, sir. Hey. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Jim. Really appreciate you having me out. Thank you. Alright. Take care, everybody. Don't fear the gear. Thanks for listening Dealcasters.

Jim Fuhs [00:51:09]:
Congratulations. You've taken another step forward in your contact creation journey. Please don't forget to hit the subscribe or follow button here in your favorite podcast player, so you can be reminded every time we drop an app say. We love hearing from our listeners and viewers. And if you're wanting to watch our shows live on Amazon,

Chris Stone [00:51:29]:
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Jim Fuhs [00:51:43]:
If you have questions about this episode or have something you want us to review, you can also email us at field casters@deal casters.live. Thanks again for listening, and you know the deal. Don't fear the gift.