Enhancing the Connection of Social Platforms and Sales with Brandon Lee

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Welcome to the live Better Sell Better podcast with your host, Kevin Dorsey of Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening, and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExCexcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff. What up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of the live Better Sell Better podcast. This is your host, Kevin Dorsey, AKA kd. And today we are going to be taking a different turn and a different twist on this thing called social selling. Because as big of a believer I am in that social selling can happen. I do not believe you actually can socially sell. I believe you can socially attract. I believe you can socially engage. I believe you can socially prospect. The sales process is not done socially, but the attraction process is. And that is why I'm so excited to have Brandon Lee on the show with me today. He's the founder and CEO at Funnel Amplified, and this is what he does. He finds ways to truly leverage social platforms. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. It doesn't just have to be LinkedIn, y', all, to actually build pipeline and do it the right way. So we are going to be diving in, getting super tactical on this idea of social prospecting. Brandon, my man, welcome to the show.

Kd. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited. Big, big listener of the show. I'm so happy to be here.

This is great, man, because when you reached out, it's like just the word social prospecting. I'm like, I need to talk to this guy. Because everyone always says social selling sellers should be social selling, but that's not really what's happening here. So when you say social prospecting, what do you mean? Let's start right there.

Well, let me tell the story to set it up. I was at a networking event, for lack of a better word. It was live, it was pre Covid, and there's like five of us standing around in a circle. Everybody had a cocktail, beer, drink wine, something in their hand, and we're chit chatting, right? We're all getting to know each other because that's what you do. That's the way this whole prospecting networking stuff starts. And we're sitting there chatting and all of a sudden this woman comes up and she goes, excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt. And she kind of like parted two people and got in the middle and she gave her pitch. Like she, you know, did her thing and then she pulled out her business cards and she handed a business card to every person. And she goes, so just whenever you think of da, da, da, remember me. And she goes, okay, sorry, I really didn't mean to interrupt. And she like walked out of the circle and left. And we all just paused for a minute and went, what the hell happened? And we started laughing. And, you know, I'm the guy with the personality enough. I put the card in my hand. I stuck my hand in the middle, I said, anyone else want to put it in the junk pile? And everybody put their cards in my hand and I threw them away. Why did I do this? And why do I even say that? Well, because that's not a way to build a relationship with somebody. That's not a way to build rapport. That's not a way to introduce yourself to somebody if you really want to serve them. That's a way of coming in and going, me, me, me. And by the way, me, me, me. And I don't care that I interrupted. I don't care that I was rude. I just want to get my message across. And that is not what social prospecting is. Right. That is a real life version. What I would use the term social selling. What so many people do with selling, where they're pushing their messages. Push, push, push. Even if it's a LinkedIn message. Hey, would you like to connect with me? I love to meet people in this industry and, and if you accept it, and then it's boom, pitch, slap. Next message. Let me tell you how awesome I am. And oh, by the way, here's my calendar link. Let's get 15 minutes on the calendar. It doesn't work. It. I think it used to work several years ago because it was kind of new, but we're all over it. It's too much. So your question was, what is social prospecting? And thanks for indulging me while I tell that story to set it up. Social prospecting is the activity of becoming familiar and known with your prospects and giving value and earning the right to a meeting.

Oh, there's so much we can unpack from that story. So let's kind of break this down. Right? So you mentioned two of the key Rs in selling relationships and rapport. So start with rapport. Because I think this is an area that a lot of sellers get wrong. And truthfully, it's because they're taught this way. Like how do you actually build rapport? Because rapport comes before the relationship. Everyone just loves to jump to the relationships. You gotta build a relationship.

Oh yeah.

Cause it's that easy. Let me just go to the relationship tree and just start to grab something. How do you properly build rapport via social platforms?

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. And building rapport in social is about consistently showing up in two places. Number one is you have to share and I like the term professional insight post or a personal insight post. So we call them pips, right? It's not a social post. Not a social post. Let's go share stuff. Let's, let's go share our marketing brochure. Let's go share our pitch and our value proposition. Because the data shows no one, no one pays attention to those anyway. So stop posting those.

Right?

But when you share your insights, whether it's, hey, I read this article in my industry and here's some things that I took for it and this is from it, and this is why it's important and why you should read it, that is sharing your professional insights. Now I say that one first because it really is a first step in a four step process. We have to open our digital mouth. We have to share what we know, share what we've experienced. And I don't care if you're a 3 month, 6 month SDR or BDR or your 40 year AE, we all have experience. And when we authentically share those experiences, hey, I read this and this is what I learned. This is what I thought. What do you guys think? We're opening up those digital conversations now. Why is it so important that we share posts like that? Well, to earn the right to a meeting, our buyers, our prospects, need to be able to read and see who we are, what we think and the value we offer before they'll agree to a meeting with us. Because we're out of that stage where people will accept, you know, accept the meeting to learn about you. They don't have time for it and there's so much competition. They don't have to take their time to give you their valuable time for you to be able to prove that you have value. You have to prove it before they're willing to accept the meeting.

Yes. And you nailed something that I've been talking about for a long time where it's like sales used to be about the what Meaning buyers didn't know what was out there without talking to salespeople. So you kind of had to take some of those meetings, like, hey, I'd like to share with you some of the latest developments in your industry. We were about the what. Well, then it moved to the why. The what was kind of out there already, like, what was going on? Right. As the Internet starts to come up, it was easy to know what was going on. We started getting to, well, here's why you should use us. Now we're making that final transition into the how. Like, here's how it will actually impact you. And if you can't speak to the how, there's no interest there. Now, I actually want to take a step back here around how do you build a network of your audience? Because, all right, if right now, for example, if I went and dropped a post on LinkedIn about engineering, it would get crickets because I have not built an audience of engineers. So let's go there and then we can work backwards. I'm entering a new industry or I'm an SDR or an ae. How do I build an audience of my target so that when I post, they actually do see it?

Yeah. Thank you. And that's again, that's step two. Right. So I start with step one of actually publishing, because they've got to start there, like. And the reason they have to start there is because no matter what else we do, when people get introduced to us or they discover us, they go to our LinkedIn profile and they go and look and see. First of all, our profile better be cleaned up and human and talk about not just, not just your resume, but who you are, what you know, what you're passionate about, and let them get to know you as a human being as well. But they're going to look and say, what do you talk about? What do you share? What do you have to say? What's valuable? So you've got to start posting first. But the second thing is how you build that network. Well, that's where social prospecting comes in. Now, this is when sales teams generally say cold call, cold email. Why do they do that? Well, because you've got prospects that don't know who you are and what you offer. That's why we call it cold and we cold outreach. But what if we could make ourselves warm and familiar before we ask for anything? Now, that's what LinkedIn and other social networks give us the opportunity to do. So tactically, this is what we do. And here's a cadence that we Prescribe to our customers. You go and engage, which is practically you comment on posts that your prospects have engaged with. So they've either liked it, they've commented on it, or they published it themselves. When you go and comment on it, you actually get the power of LinkedIn working for you to meet that person. Because. So KD, let's say you've liked to post or commented on a post. And then I come along afterwards and go, I want to get Katie's attention. So I'm now going to comment on the post that KD commented on and you're going to get a notification from LinkedIn that says, KD, Brandon Lee, they're going to show you my picture, my name, and my headline. Also commented on this post. Right? LinkedIn does that because they want you coming back into LinkedIn and doing stuff, spend more time in LinkedIn. So when we actively go and comment, notice real quick, too. I haven't said connect with them yet. Don't send connection requests yet.

I'm glad you called it out. Keep going.

We go in and do engage and comment and have them see us. So we move from being cold and unknown to being recognized, familiar, maybe even warm because of the type of comments that you're, that you're making now. The best thing that happens is I come in and follow Katie's comment and I comment and then Katie comes back and comments again and I start developing that network with him. There's. And maybe I don't have to do this four or five times, but I believe we've got to move ourselves. We have to take the time. I'm a big believer in the story of the rabbit and the hare. Right? We got to go slow to move fast. I'm a big believer in getting ourselves into that familiar territory. They need to know our name, see our face, see us involved in some of the things that they're involved with online before we ask for the connection request.

And I love where this is going because I talked about, I forgot about this until you started going. I was like, this is maybe a year and a half ago or something. I did. I made up a new acronym called BA bas, which stood for Brand Building as a Skill. Once you know how to build a brand, that's a skill that follows you. And that was one of the things I talked about, is if I were going into a new industry, I'd find all the thought leaders in that industry, all the people that are putting content, and I'd follow them and I'd gauge on every single post and I'd comment and ask questions. I'd ask other people questions in the comments and just get that ball rolling. And that's how you start to build that awareness. So, okay, I love. This is. Man, I'm pumped for this. Is this how you're supposed to go after it? So, okay, so I'm starting to engage, right? I'm starting to comment. What would be an example of a good comment, though? Because I think reps oftentimes like, oh, you're right, Brandon. So I go to Brandon's profile and say, great post, Love this. Talk to me real quick about, like, how to comment real fast.

Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think one of the. And we got a program that talks about that, right? It's really just how to build rapport with people. Like, we've done that offline. So one of the big things I like to tell people is just close your eyes and imagine you're face to face with them or you're in a small group and they're talking. Take their post and turn it into real life. How would you respond? You know, there's easy things. Ask a question, tell a story of what it reminds you of. Relate it to a client, even tag a client or a prospect. Hey, this is. This is kind of like what we were talking about the other day. What do you think about it? Like, these are the types of things that we do to build rapport in real life. If we're in a circle or we don't just go, hey, good job. Like, no, people are going to look at you like, what are you doing? So we've got to think about it in that live event and respond the way we would ask questions. I mean, that's. Number one, ask a question. Number two, relate it to an experience that you have and then ask for a clarifying is, you know, I had an experience one time that da, da, da, da, da. Is that what you mean? Right. The third one. Tag other people and relate to a conversation you've had. And it could be a colleague, it could be a co worker, it could be a friend. It doesn't matter. Tag other people. It's really just the art of including yourself into a conversation. Now here's where it's also so valuable and why salespeople have if just got to get over the fear of commenting and start doing it and trial and error and figure out what works best. The percentage of people that actually comment is so low that you immediately put yourself into a new category and you immediately get people seeing you recognizing you as A voice. And your, your inbound connections will start growing dramatically.

No, this is the tactical stuff that people just need to be doing, right. And I like that you clarified how to do, like, the questions. Oren Kloff talks about this in his recent book on Flip the Scripts. He's like, ask a status alignment question, meaning a question that only someone on the same level could ask, right? So it's like, okay, you've read something about this before. You can ask an educated question. Not just oh, like, what do you mean? Or how has this worked in the past? But like really like a status alignment question. So, all right, now we're building, so we're starting to comment, starting to engage, starting to be like in their circle, right? This in their realm. They're seeing the face, they're seeing the name a little bit now. Can I connect Brandon now?

So, so what I like to prescribe, and the number varies based on people's, you know, experience level, the experience level, the people they're trying to get. But I like to use a number four or five. But engage with them four times. Get yourself in front of them at least four times. Try, you know, go comment on their comments, let them get to know you. And now we can craft a connection request that's more human, you know, kd, I keep seeing you on, on posts that I'm commenting on, you're commenting on them. I was looking at your profile. You look like it's somebody I'd really enjoy meeting. Is it okay if we connect? That's the type of connection request. Because for me, if we're sitting around with a group of people and we're all talking and, you know, everyone's kind of taking turns sharing, that's what I would do afterwards. I go up and go, man, Katie, you said some really cool things in there. I really like the way you think, you know, could we exchange business cards right back in the day? Or would you be open to get a coffee or go grab a beer? That's the way we network. That's the way we expand our influence and get to know people.

I'm loving this. I've never heard it phrase this way. And it just makes so much sense of like, how would you do it at an in person meeting? How would you do it if you met someone face to face, just spoken on, on stage and how would you interact there? I really love this premise of, like, what would I say to them? Like, what, how would I approach it if I liked something they did or I wanted to get to know them? Right. Because to your point, you wouldn't just walk up to the stranger 100% and say, hey, could we grab coffee? Right? Like, I mean, you can, right? Like, you could do that and eventually it would work, right? Like, you ask 100, you ask a thousand, someone's going to take you up on that free coffee. Right. But I'm like, I like this. And so now talk about the connection request a little bit more because this is a place that's getting a little bit more and more, like, pushback around. Like, oh, should you personalize it or should you not? What is your take there?

Yeah, well, I think if we, if we do the setup the right way, we actually go in and start networking and we comment and yeah, we're doing this for a reason. I mean, this is strategic outreach. This isn't passive. Oh, social media, it's so cute. This is very strategic outreach. Right. This is pipeline building. So we're doing it for a purpose. But if you've engaged with them, and that's why I say four or five times, maybe in some things you want to do six. But when you become familiar, you're no longer cold, they recognize you because of their commenting, then I think it's totally okay to send a connection request and you should personalize it because you've already been engaging with them. You've already invited yourself and entered into their world. You better personalize it to make it what I think is more human and to trigger for them just in case, because we're all busy, how they would remember you as. I kind of gave that example, kd, I saw, you know, we, you and I have been posting on the same post. You know, that post that, you know, Owen did on this, like, just give that familiarity because we will accept connection requests much more from somebody we're familiar with than somebody who's completely cold.

Yeah. And that's all walks. That's when I walk my teams through.

Literally.

I'm giving a presentation at an SKO tomorrow on this and going like, the entire point of a cadence of a multitouch process is to build awareness and familiarity. That's the point, right. Where they recognize the name, they start to associate, like, wait, I might know who this person is. And social warms up the emails. Emails warms up the social. Social warms up the calls, calls, warm up the emails. Like, it all starts to work together because you start to show up in different places. But I'm sure there's some people listening right now going, yeah, Brandon, cool. I got a set meetings, like I'm not like, I'm not here just to comment and get did like when do I set, how do I set a meeting with this? How do I generate the pipeline?

Yeah, so don't sell too, too soon, Right. We still need to earn the sale. And if you get to this point and then you pitch, slap them after the connection request, you're going to lose them. Because people love to buy but they never want to be sold. Right? So you've set up, set everything up really well for a great conversation. What I recommend is after the connection request and you know, customers we work with, we train them this way, they're 2,300% increase in accepted requests because they, they nurture it to get there. What I recommend is first response. Kd, thank you so much for accepting my connection request. I hope you have a great day. That's it, that's it. Then wait a day or two and I get it. Meeting, meeting, meetings. It's a go slow to move fast. You have a much higher percentage rate, right? Do you want to hit the home runs or do you want to have a higher percentage rate of getting, getting on base? I'm not a baseball fan, but I love baseball analogies, right? So you thank them and then you go engage again. And maybe it's twice again, depending on their experience level and how hard they are to get. But go engage one or two more times and then you can follow it up. And this is where one we can send. We're connected now. Send them direct messages of Hey, I wrote this social post the other day because I was talking to somebody who's the same title as you or in a different company but does similar work. And they asked this question. I read this article and I wanted to share it with you. Start giving, right? This is where we're giving deposits. We're earning credibility because we have to earn the right to the meeting. Remember, people don't accept meetings with us to learn about you. They need to know about you before they'll accept the meeting now. So either you're in a hurry, go engage one more time, then send a message and ask for a virtual coffee. Right? Or start sharing some more information. Here's a post I wrote, here's a blog article from our company website that ABC don't just send links. Always give context as to why you're sharing it. And then you can ask for that virtual coffee. Now, I believe, and this is a really, really hard point for salespeople, your first virtual coffee should not be a sales call. It's A warmup, right? Get to know them, let them get to know you. We're still in that. They're still trying to figure out if they want to give us a shot at dating. Right? That's a call. And this is where we can separate ourselves. Now, every call is different, I get that. But when you start just building rapport and you don't sell, a lot of times we earn the opportunity. A lot of times in that call, somebody will actually ask me. They're like, okay, Brandon, you've been asking me questions on what do you do, right? And it's always better to share what you do when they asked you what you do than for you to volunteer. Volunteer your information.

Man. So where my head goes with this and I love stuff like this and I've been, since I've stepped out of like full time leadership, I've had more time to like, step back and think and review and like question kind of everything, right? How long should this take before you think it starts to like, generate results? Because what's gone through my head a lot since stepping out is like, if I were really actually trying to do this right for the long term, not for the short term, it'd be like six months of nothing but this, right? With a team, like you're not even trying to set meetings right now. Like, it's literally the brand, the outreach, the connections, the industry knowledge, the industry insights. But like taking six months, if I had a team that did that for six months, what I believe they could produce over the next two years, Right. Would trounce anybody and everybody in that space. So like, how long do you think this would take before you start to see dividends on this?

What if I told you it was less than 30 days?

I'd be super fired up.

Yeah, I think it's, it's a two and a half to three week cycle that you can put somebody through that and you can put, you know, 50 to 100 people through that or more depending on, I mean, this is where repetition, getting comfortable with commenting getting more like salespeople, we have to hone our craft, right? Professional athletes, they, they train 95, 96% of the time or more. They only play 1 to 2% right? In, except for baseball, it seems like they are always playing. But in salespeople, we need to, we need to hone our craft, get better at commenting. I, I, when salespeople go, oh yeah, I don't know how to craft, I don't know how to comment. We'll figure it out. That's Your job, you want to build pipeline, you want to book meetings. You need to go and engage and talk with people where they are, not where you want them to be. And if they're not answering their phones, was it 79% of calls that come from an unknown number go straight to voicemail if they're not answering your calls. And we know what's been happening with, with email since COVID because everybody in the world had the same great idea. Send more emails, right? Email. The efficacy of emails dropped. We gotta go where they are and we have to introduce ourselves in a different way. And social is efficient. If your travel budgets are getting removed or your conferences aren't happening, I can sit at my desk all day long and do this with hundreds of people a week and book new meetings all the time.

Yeah, I, I love this because it's something where it's just the consistency, right. Just doing it consistently. Because I think with, with so many, you know, sales techniques and methodologies, it's like, oh, I did it. I, I commented Brandon and I didn't book any meetings. You're like, no, you got to put it in all, all, all day long and consistently. Let's go another angle on this before we start to wrap up. Right. Which is like the time this takes. And you talked about, you know, value and I actually just posted about this last week about this idea of like, value. It's only valuable if they can use it. And you kind of touched on this slightly around like the context, not just here's a case study or here's a like giving context of how they should use what they've shared with them. How do you provide value socially? Like, what are some good examples of like, you know, value based posts or value based messages where it's actually valuable to the prospect.

Yeah. So I think a really simple system is this. And I know it's a podcast, but I'm held up. Anyways, I got my notebook and it is a written notebook. It's ink on paper and I have a digital version of it on my phone as well. But I write down every question I hear from a, from a prospect or a client because if they're asking those questions, that's what's important to my prospects. And then what we do is we find articles. Now obviously you don't find any of your competitors articles, but one way you can do it is just do a simple Google search for an article. Now hear this. That speaks to the topic. It doesn't have to answer the question, it just speaks to the topic. Now we all get E newsletters coming to us all the time too. That's probably a great source of information. Or you can do Google alerts and get articles sent to you that way. But you find an article that speaks to the question and this, I love this tactic. You go and you read the article and then you write a social post that says I read this article because KD asked me the question. And I could either say KD by name or I can say someone's title. Right? This is a good question because just fill in the blank. And here's three key points from this article I think are most important. 1, 2, 3. Done. Then this is where it gets really tactical and very valuable. Post it.

Right?

This is your one to many conversation. But now you take it and you turn it into one to one. So number one I'm going to do is I'm going to take that post and because in my notebook I know the day that I talked to KD and when he asked that question. So I'm going to send it first to kd. I'm going to say, hey kd, the other day you asked this question when we talked, I thought it was a great question. So I created this social post about it. Love to hear what you think. What am I doing? I'm trying to establish myself as a trusted advisor for my prospect by providing information. Now the next thing you do with that is I go and I want to send it to all the other people that are the same Persona as KD in my list and I go send it to them. So after we've connected, if I haven't booked a meeting right away or they were resistant, we didn't, weren't able to schedule a virtual coffee. Well then that's where I put them in a cadence like this and I'll say, you know, hey kd, I was talking to someone the other day who's the same title as you and they asked this question. I thought it was really awesome. So I wrote this social post. I thought you might find value in it. Give deposit deposits. Deposits, right. We're depositing into people before we ask so we can earn the right to ask for the meeting.

Now I think this is so, so good. I love how you're also, you know, you go one to many, many to one, one like you know, taking it in and then also out on a level I really, really like.

Don't waste your content. Right? Don't waste your content. Awesome.

So this is so good. So as we start to wrap, right, you were Kind of touching on it a little bit. It's like, how on earth, like, can I set this up as. As a leader on my team for like all of my reps to be doing this? Sourcing articles, reading them. I shoot, they barely read my emails, let alone going out like the industry insights. So, like, how do you recommend setting up a program, a system or whatever to accomplish?

And I appreciate it and I don't want to be so, you know, salesy, but when I was coaching sales teams with this process, we built a bunch of pretty elaborate spreadsheets and they got a little bit cumbersome. But one of the, One of the pieces of Funnel Amplified and why we created it was to try and make this simple. So lots of ways, you know, nobody. You don't have to use our tools, but, you know, get Google alerts that send articles to you. Block out time on your calendar. I think it's 15 minutes max that you can read an article and write a post that says, I'm reading this article. I read this article because it's important, because here's three key points and what I prescribe to people to start is do it three times a week. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I know, you know, people are like, oh, I barely do one a month. Well, hey, take your craft serious, get off your butt and do it. This is what we have to do for sales now. So 15 minutes. What I if for people that don't mind is like, look, take Saturday morning, take an hour on Saturday morning, read three articles, go through this process and schedule them for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, the following week. Take it off your plate.

Yeah, it's so important. Like, and you've hinted at it, you've also said it a few times of like, salespeople, this is what it takes to be successful. Like, you know, I get tired of so many of the excuses of like, oh, like, I don't have time or I don't want to do that or whatever. It's like, this is what it takes to be great, you know, and you have to lean in to that stuff and be like, all right, this is the stuff that no one else is willing to do. And that's why I'll do it.

Right. And honestly, it's a hell of a lot more fun than getting hung up on and leaving voicemails all day long. Yes.

Like, on so many levels.

Yeah. And I get it. I think here's one of the biggest problems for sales professionals right now. Leadership has their KPIs that they have to make X amount of cold calls per day. When we start working with teams, we say, look, we need to ease that down a little bit and we're going to shift part of their time. Like, this is a pilot program. But the goal is, it's not which outreach, you know, do you want them to do, it's which outreach is most efficient. So if they took an hour a day to engage socially with prospects, well, within an hour a day, you can do 30 to 40 people, right? You build up to it because at first you get there and you go, ah, what do I comment? What do I say? Get it. But you get good at it and all of a sudden you're like 30, 40 people a day and you go engage with them a couple times a week, you're nurturing over 100 people a week. And then the following week you're nurturing them again. The following week you're connecting and you're sharing content and you're asking for meetings. And what we find is a lot of salespeople, they start getting asked by people for the meeting because they stand out. They're one to many. Content of a social post is sharing what they think, what they know. And here's a, here's a data point that should excite any sales professional out there right now. 1%, 1% of LinkedIn registered users post at least once a month. You want an opportunity to stand out and be totally different and be known, just show up.

It's so crazy to me, and it is. This is something where people will talk about it, but they won't be about it. They won't actually do these things. And it quite literally can change your career, borderline Change your life. LinkedIn has changed my life, right, from doing this and doing this on a regular basis and just being willing to do what others are not willing to do. And that's, that's how you separate yourself in, in the market here. And I do, I think what I love. I talked about this with my team. Sometimes it's like if you were to go head to head with someone, right? If you were to go head to head right your way versus, like, you know, the templated email spray and pray, you know, make like $70 a day, they might beat you the first month, maybe that's a strong maybe. But they might get you the second month by month two, month, three, month four, it won't even be close in terms of who's producing more. And then it also won't be close in terms of who's enjoying life more and who's enjoying it Right. And going through it, and it's this focus on speed. It really kills everybody because it's like, there's no argument to it. It's just, you gotta slow down for a second and let it build up. And it's a better way to sell. Which is the whole premise of this podcast and is my final question for you here, right? Is the concept behind this too? Is Live Better sell better? So I also have this weird idea, right? Like, what if we took better care of ourselves and what if we made the job more enjoyable? And what if we had more energy or fulfillment or happiness in life? I firmly believe that the sales would go up from that as well. What would your live Better advice be for people listening? What were the parting thoughts?

So the live better is when we do this in social media, especially getting comfortable with who you are and being fully yourself, right? And being good with that. You don't have to hide, you know, this stuff. It's social media. I get it. But people like to do business with people who they know, like, and trust, right? Be, you know, social is just that. And we talked about at the beginning, when you're in a live networking event, what do you talk about? We don't talk about business right away. We don't walk up and stick our brochure in people's faces. We talk about. We start with what? Oh, the traffic to get here, maybe the weather a little bit. We'll talk about sports. We talk about where you live, talk about your family. You know, you talk about those things. And that's all the precursor of getting to know people. And so be comfortable was sharing some of that content in social media. And it's not LinkedIn, isn't Facebook. Look, we people do business with people who they know, like and trust. So we have to express that by sharing information about ourselves. So the live Better part, I believe, is when we're fully comfortable in just embracing who we are. And I know this is hard. These are mindset shifts. I get that. But when we're fully comfortable just putting in LinkedIn and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, whatever, who we are, what we think, what we're about, and be consistent, well, it frees us up. And when we're free and light like that, we're attractive. Other people are attracted to us. And as sales people, we don't need to be caught up in this. Oh, it's so hard. And, oh, I got to make all these calls, man. There's a better way. And you actually make more money and you have a Lot more fun and you meet more people, and then business starts coming to you and you sit around and go, man, I love sales, but the biggest challenge, I think, is sales leaders. It's still. And I feel totally safe saying this. I'm 52 years old. I've been doing this for 25 years. The older sales leaders, like, what we did with cold calling cadences and what we did with email cadences was great back then, but it's not anymore. You know, we got to do different ways to support this. It's time to adjust. We've, you know, call your audible and do what you need to do, because we're not going to win with the same old playbook.

You know what's funny about that, man? And I know we got a wrap. This. We're already at time. I was like, dang it. Like, I try to keep them to 30, but then it gets too good and I keep going. But, like, surprisingly, though, dude, I had to fight this with my own internal team. Like, that 1% posting is not because leadership's telling people not. It's because more often not. They're still not confident enough to go out and do it. I had, like, fight my team on this stuff of, like, I don't want you making 70 calls a day, but if you're not going to do the other things, that's all we're left. You know, like, why wouldn't you sell this way? If I stepped into an SDR role, this is all I would do. This in video, this is all I would do.

Yeah.

All day long.

I. I think that, look, times have changed. I think the. The profile of a salesperson that we hire needs to change. Right. I think that people that are comfortable creating content, sharing content, engaging socially, they're going to be much better salespeople than what we've traditionally had. I also think. And I may be out there, but I do think that sales coaching, there's. There's a psych. There's a. The. The psychology side of it that's got to shift. Like, this is. We're really digging into what works in social media is about authenticity, and most of us aren't comfortable being authentic and episode right there. Yeah. And that's where. I mean, but that's where the gold is, right? That's where. That's where the money is. So getting. Getting over it and test it. I mean, here's. Here's the thing for people. We all suck at things until we start doing it. So it's okay to suck at it for A while. It's okay to make mistakes. If you post something out there and nobody responds, man, send the link to me. I'll go comment on it. Right? Just get started. Excuse me. And what we do know, when we start things, most often the negative Nellies are the first ones that show up. Who fricking cares? They're not our audience. You post and you get someone that says something negative or, oh, what do you think? You're a social media person now. Move on. I don't have time for you. You're not going to get me to. To my. To where I want to be in life. I'm not going to pay attention to that.

It's so true, man. And that is where. When I talk with reps and leaders about this, the number one thing that holds them back, Number one, bar none. I'm sure you hear this all the time. It's mindset. But you know what? They're afraid of the internal. They're afraid of how their peers will judge them. They're afraid of how their boss will judge them. They're afraid of what the team. It's crazy. Like, they're actually afraid of the internal. Right. That my peers are going to judge me more than the external. It's crazy to me. But it's how tribal we are, and we're not willing to stand out.

And I think it's. And I know we're over, but I think the internal challenge is because they all want to do it right? They're just scared to. So when someone starts doing it, man, it's dragging them back down into the muck. Admire. Because if I don't have the money balls to leave, why should you? Excuse me. Can I say that on your podcast?

This is far from. I don't edit any of this. We do this and do this live. So, Brandon, man, this was. Truthfully, it was even better than I was expecting. Like, this is tactical. It is thoughtful. It is really, really intentional, which is my favorite word. Where can people go find more of you? Where are you putting out information? Like, where can people get more of what you're doing right now?

Yeah, I appreciate that. So LinkedIn is my primary and it's Brandon Lee digital. But I'm also. I mean, believe it or not, I'm on TikTok. I'm on Instagram reels, and I use a lot of video there. And those are all Brandon Lee digital. Twitter is B lead digital. Honestly, I don't play a whole lot in. In there and then funnel amplified. And if I, If I can. I mean, I think one of the best ways for salespeople to start is we built a tool called Magic Writer. And it's really simple. It's going to bring articles to you based on your keywords in your industry. And all you have to do is read it, let Magic Writer ask you questions, you write your answers and it converts it into a well written, engaging social post. And we do free trials with it. We don't ask for credit cards. Right. We live in a new world. You guys want to come try something? We don't ask for a credit card. So you can try it at your own pace. Do what you want. But that's funnel amplified.com and Katie, thanks for letting me plug plug a little bit of Funnel Amplified.

I am all for plugging things that I think will help salespeople do their job better. Right. There's again this live better sell better. If it saves time, it makes it easier. I'm all for it. So we'll include that in the show notes for everybody listening. But Brandon, my man, thank you again so much for your time and energy. This was great.

Awesome. Katie, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Oh yeah.

Make.