Social Selling Tips n Tricks - Live Greenroom Broadcast 14 July 2021

Okay, welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us on episode 2 of Social Selling Tips and Tricks. I'm glad to be joined here today by Craig Langley, a fellow social seller and a real good friend from the UK. Good morning. It's good morning where you are, Craig. Good morning.

Good, good, good morning. Good evening to you, Con. How are we?

Good, good. Thank you, Craig, and thanks for joining us here today. This is our second time on Green Room under the Social Selling Warrior Club and talking social selling tips and tricks. This is on Green Room. It's going live on Green Room, and eventually we'll be able to create a podcast out of this and put it up on the various podcast channels. So, Craig, I thought I'd start off today's conversation just briefly talking a little bit about your background, maybe a bit of a history of any qualifications you may have, and how you ended up being a LinkedIn enthusiast, and also for that case, how you use LinkedIn for your social selling. So, let's talk a bit about you, Craig, and I'll hand it over to you.

Yeah, thanks, Con. So, I've got a software degree. I did computing maths at university, so a lot of scientific programming, and then I decided I didn't want be a programmer, I went back to night school and I did a marketing diploma. And then I managed to combine them both and work for Microsoft for 5 years, so doing Windows CE business development. So I've ended up working in international sales for 28 years now. I've built 4 companies over the years, and I've been using LinkedIn since 2007 for global business development. I've managed to get clients in China, India, Korea, Japan, right across Europe to Canada, Mexico, and, and the US as well, all through, all through LinkedIn. So I love LinkedIn. I'm a big Sales Navigator user. I've been using Sales Navigator for 5 years now and I'm on it every day, Con. So yeah, I'm a bit of a LinkedIn geek.

Good to hear, Craig. That's great. And ladies and gentlemen, we are joined, as you can see, by royalty here. I mean, Craig's got a really distinguished background, you know, started 4 companies, worked for Microsoft. So we don't often get people of this caliber joining us on Open Sessions. So thank you, Craig. Craig, I was going to start off by saying, for asking maybe for a bit of a word, You talked about you've been using Navigator now for a while. For someone starting out, do we have to jump into using Navigator, or do you think there is enough there for us on the free version of LinkedIn to do some social selling? What's— well, if you were to give advice to someone, what would you say?

I would say, you know, it's like a car, isn't it? You know, you want to learn to drive the car properly before you upgrade to a Ferrari. You know, there's so much you can do with the free version that people don't do. Like you can do very, very targeted searches using Boolean on a free account. So you don't need Sales Navigator. It helps a lot. It makes it makes life a lot easier. But I'd say certainly if you've got less than than two thousand connections and you know you're trying to build your network and and get a presence on the platform, then I would say you can do that with free LinkedIn.

That's very handy to know, Craig. You dropped that magic word there, that Boolean word. I know we're not on a visual platform here, we are on an audio app, but can you give us a bit of an example how we can use Boolean in our search box in LinkedIn to do a targeted search? Can you give us an example you use on a regular basis?

Yeah, yeah, sure. So, so, you know, there's, there's some, um, really good searches you can do. So, um, uh, you can, you can combine the searches. So for example, you can search for people's headline, and it tends to be that people who put, um, for example, LinkedIn coach or something like that in, in their headline, that's their primary purpose for being on LinkedIn. So searching for headline, you get very, very, uh, targeted searches. So you could do headline colon and, and put in LinkedIn, LinkedIn for example, and then you could put and skills, and you might want to say, well, I want somebody who's got training or skills coaching, and you can combine those searches and you will get a very, very targeted list of people who are, who are literally LinkedIn trainers, LinkedIn coaches, if you did that sort of search.

So we can use a range of Boolean characters there, Craig, the AND, the AND NOTs, and so forth, and the OR.

Yeah, yeah, so you can use AND, OR, capital O, capital R, and the NOT function's very, very useful if you want to take out job seekers, or you can search for posts. For example, you can, you can, you can search for hashtags, and instead of hitting the, um, the people search on, on LinkedIn, you can search for posts, and you can combine a number of hashtags, and you can remove the word, uh, job.

Oh.

Yeah, and go and not job, and, and then you will get all the posts, um, minus the, the job posts. So I'm in automotive, Con, as you know.

Yeah.

And I do very sort of specific searches in autonomous driving, for example. And I can use the autonomous driving hashtags, like ADAS is a very common hashtag for autonomous driving. So I can do #autonomous or #ADAS and automotive and not job or and not vacancy or something like that, and I would get a very targeted list of posts if I did that search.

And the beauty of these search engines and with LinkedIn, with the free version, you can not only use those Boolean logic in that search box, but you can also then, when you get your search results, you can hone in on posts, on people, on groups, on events. So it really depends on what particular aspect of LinkedIn You want to search given that Boolean parameter you're being— you've imported.

Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely, Con. And the other useful thing you can do is actually, um, save the searches as a bookmark in Google Chrome, or you can just copy the URL and keep them in a spreadsheet. And then every day or every few days, you can jump straight to people or straight to posts, and you don't have to scroll through your homepage feed You can, you can go straight to very targeted posts.

And I was thinking about that today because I saw a post. I don't know who it was. I think it was Richard Vanderbloem, the famous Richard Vanderbloem. If you're not following Richard Vanderbloem, people that are listening to us at the moment, do yourself a favor and follow Richard. And he was saying that, you know how our feeds are sometimes populated with a lot of things that we're either connections or people we follow or could be a company. But if you really want to become targeted and don't have much time, in the morning, for example, and you just want to have a quick look and see what are your connections talking about, or what are your followers, or what are some of the, you know, the search parameters you've used, and you want to go in there and do that search again and target and have a look, have a quick look at what's been presented overnight, you know, while you've been asleep. That is one way of doing it, by saving that, like you said, Craig, saving that as a bookmark, clicking that again, and just getting that search redone. And that way you have a targeted search results list presented to you that you can then review, and then you can come back later on and do some more looking at your posts and so forth. Because you know how you wake up in the morning, your feed is just populated with so many things, you don't know where to start.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, you know, I search using these Boolean strings all the time, and I save them in bookmarks, and I've also got them in a spreadsheet, and I just click to those, you know, 2, times a week. And I find it very, very powerful finding second connections. Wow. And you're finding very active second connections by doing that.

So now, for the benefit of our listeners, Craig, can you tell us what is that sort of that second— the word you use, second connections? Because a variety of people listen to our podcast, so we want to make sure that we're all on the same page. When we talk second connections, why is it relevant and important to touch base with second connections?

Well, the thing is, you know, a lot of people on LinkedIn don't actually post, comment, or like. So, you want to find the active people in your industry. And by connecting to second connections, you get exposed to their connections. So, you're building your reach into the into the network. Um, and if you can, um, build relationship with the, the very active posters, the, the influencers if you like, yeah, um, and, and get them, you know, actively comment on their posts, and, and in return that they might actually, actually comment on your posts, then you're going to get really good reach, um, by engaging with those very active posters.

Now, Craig, I know we've, you know, spoken a number of times, and one of the other things you've taught me, and you've taught me well, is about getting access to your data and being able to use that data for social selling purposes. Can you just explain to our listeners how would they go about getting access to their data and then what can they do with that data?

Yeah, yeah, sure. So everything you do on LinkedIn gets tracked. So every comment, every like, every post, uh, every connection you make, and, and every message you, uh, you send, uh, and receive all gets stored, uh, as separate CSVs. And you can actually get a download in a zip file of all these CSVs by going to, um, settings and What does LinkedIn do with your data? And ask for a complete data download, and you have to wait 24 hours, and you will receive an email with a with a link to to get the zip file. And if you went into messages.csv, you will get every message that's been sent and received on on LinkedIn, including their their URLs. So it's very very handy if you're trying to find an old message because the the LinkedIn messaging system is is not very good. Things get archived, you know, within a month or two, and it's quite hard to find old messages. The searching doesn't work very well. It's not like Outlook where you can just do a search and find messages from 2 years ago. You can't do that in LinkedIn. So I had a friend recently at Bosch in Germany and said, I've had a conversation with somebody last October. I can't find it. How do I find it? And I talked him through how we found it, and he was, uh, he was over the moon that he could go and get a spreadsheet with all those messages that were exchanged, um, October last year.

Wow, that's great. So we're starting with some, um, I mean, I don't want to underestimate the skill set of the Excel people, but with someone with some basic Excel skills can then take that data, that CSV file, and manipulate it and massage it and extract the relevant information they desire And then how would they act on that information, Craig? What would be your suggestion?

Well, you know, there's several things, isn't it? You want to find out who in your network you've got strong relationships with, so it'll highlight who you've exchanged a lot of messages with. It'll give you a message count. Um, it's good for keeping in touch with people, so it'll, it'll give you a, a list of people that you exchange a number of messages with, and then you might not have exchanged a message for 6 or 12 or or 18 months. So it's good for keeping in touch with people.

Yes.

It's also good for identifying people that you connected with and have not built a relationship with. You've not exchanged a message, so the dormant connections. And then you might decide that, you know, actually I connected with this guy 3 years ago and with this objective, and that objective is no longer relevant. So you might decide to disconnect or the person's left the industry or something like that. Everybody has got dormant connections that just sit there.

And this is one way of uncovering them and reconnecting. And then if they don't respond, you can then make a decision whether you want to cull them or just keep them as a connection going forward. But that's a great strategy, Craig. I think not many people— I don't think many people do download their data, first of all. And secondly, I don't think many people do what you do and massage and and, um, you know, sort of manipulate that data in order to extract the information they desire. Now, we know there's a variety of, um, LinkedIn analytics apps out there. We've got, you know, Shield, we've got Inlytics. But what you do, I think, is something unique that cannot be done by an app. Would that be correct?

Yeah. And the other thing is, Con, it doesn't use any plugins, it doesn't use any automation. You're just using your own LinkedIn data, so it's 100% safe. You're not using any external tools.

That's a great point to make, Craig, because we do know that LinkedIn, as part of the terms of service, are cracking down on a lot more of those sort of third-party tools. So that's a really good point.

Yeah, I saw an article recently saying there were a list of 80 automation tools that they'd shut down.

Yes, I saw that too. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it, how they show it? So there's some great tips. So you've been listening, uh, be worthwhile you rewinding this if you listen to the replay and, uh, just taking some notes about what Craig outlined there. I think it's some great tips there about how you can get access to your data, and once you get access to your data, you can manipulate that data and massage it, for that, for that one of a better word, to, uh, to extract information. Yeah. And start connecting. And start connecting and start reaching out.

And I think one of the other most powerful things you can do is clean up your homepage feed. So you'll find that, you know, there are certain connections who just sit there all day going, going, share, share, share, share, share, share, share, just hitting the share button, filling up, filling up your feed. And if you, if you typed in the URL linkedin.com/feed/following.

Yeah.

It will bring up all your connections that are sharing and posting in order, and you'll find that there'll be some people who are literally hitting share 50, 60 times a week, and you can make a decision to unfollow them. They don't get a notification, they'll remain as a connection, so you'll be exposed to their network if they've got their settings open. And it just means that you clean up your feed and you won't be seeing all these, all these shares.

So can you give that to us again? Because I'm just doing it at the moment. So you go linkedin.com/feed/followers.

That's following, following.

Following.

Yeah, yeah. linkedin.com. Let me just do it while I'm here. linkedin.com/feed/followers.

Following. Okay, and then you can select any of these and it puts them in order of what you say, Craig. It puts them in order of the ones that are—

well, you can search then by, um, by people or companies. So that on the right-hand side you'll see some of the filters, connections, arrows, you know, bars, hashtags.

Yep, yep.

So you can search by connections, companies, or hashtags. So if you did connections You will see, you know, I've just done it now, on my top row people are posting 60 times a week. And when you look into it, they're not posting, they're just hitting the share button.

Okay, now that's a good point. So people, if you're following with us at home, it's linkedin.com/feed/following, and then like Craig says, on the right-hand side there, there's those 3 little lines, looks like the amplifier Filter settings. If you click on that and just filter on connections, once you get your connections list, you'll see below their name, it's very— and this is where I was, I didn't notice the first time, Craig, it's a bit fine print, but it tells you the individual and how many times they've posted in the week, and that way you get a chance to see. That's right, and when you actually dig a bit deeper, you'll notice they're not posts, So what you could do then, Craig, is just click on that following and unfollow them, and that way your feed should be a lot more effective. Is that what you're saying?

That's right, that's right.

Magic, what a great tip.

It'll clean up your homepage feed. So I know some people who have got, you know, 6,000, 7,000 connections but only follow about 400 people. So they keep their clean— their feed, um, very, very clean.

Yes, yes, that's a good— that's a very good, uh, tip, that one. Craig, you should do a video on that one. Yeah, you want to tell us? I know we're talking about videos. I know Craig has done a couple of videos, and, uh, especially on the Boolean logic one. I know you've done a video for that, Craig. Where can people follow that— find that video and follow along?

Well, that's actually— I put it on my YouTube channel, which my company is HJSAM, so H-J-S-A-M. You'll also find it on my LinkedIn profile, of course.

Magic.

But yeah, I'd like to do some more sort of how-to videos because there are a few little hidden tips that you can do on a free account.

So I'll try to get that into the show notes of this podcast, but if I don't— so that's, uh, go to YouTube and just search HJSam. Is that correct?

That's right, yes.

And you should be able to find Craig, and there is some really good videos there, how-to videos on LinkedIn. And like Craig said, he's going to be doing a lot more. So if you subscribe to it and put a little bell and notification, you'll be able to see his, uh, updated videos. Craig, you've shared some amazing stuff here. with us today. Uh, um, what I was going to do is we, we did start talking about Navigator and, um, and the freer version, but if we, we just touch on briefly on Navigator for those who may be interested. What does Navigator give you that you deploy as a feature on a regular basis? What's one feature in Navigator that you really like and enjoy?

Well, the, the most powerful feature is it has a Spotlight tab for function. So there's a tab that shows people who are active in the last 30 days.

Magic.

So, you know, as we all know, you know, a huge amount of LinkedIn are people we call watchers or lurkers. You know, they, they're on the platform regularly, but they don't post, they don't like, they don't comment. But in Sales Navigator, there's actually a tab that identifies the, the active contributors to LinkedIn. So these, these are people that are hitting like, comment, share, and, and, and posting.

Where do we find that tab? Where do we find that tab, Craig? How do we find that tab?

So, so that's on the, uh, that's on the home page of, uh, of Sales Navigator. If you look at, um, if you look at, um, Connections, which is—

Okay.

Leads, they're called, they're called in Sales Navigator. Then you'll see, you'll see some tabs, and you've got one that says changed jobs in the last 90 days, and then you've got another tab that says active 30 days.

Yeah, yeah, great point, great, great point.

Yeah, yeah. So that's—

so you, how do you, what do you use with that one, Craig? So when you get a spotlight, how do you then For our listeners, what's a tactical strategy you use after that? Well, once you've found—

what I do is, is if I want to grow my network, you know, I, I do very sort of niche business development within the automotive field. So if I want to target somebody within General Motors working in autonomous driving, I'll find the active people with that active 30 days tab, and I'll, um, find their posts and comment on their posts, and then I'll send them an introduction message, an invitation message referencing that post.

Good, good. And that shows you're interested and shows you care about what they're posting. Is that correct?

Yeah, that's right. So I'll use, you know, I'll use the post as a sort of break the barrier to build rapport.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. Yeah, and I do a very similar approach. My strategy is to look at people's— my strategy is mainly to engage, look at various posts I find in my feed. I do enjoy to interact and engage with that provider perspective. We have seen recent research from Richard Vanderbloem that engagement Commenting is what really gets you traction on LinkedIn. So by continuing to engage and interacting and commenting on posts. Now, the other thing we also heard recently, Craig, I think maybe I heard it from you or others, there was some research being done or someone doing some A/B testing around liking your own post and getting that, and that provides a bit of an extra traction On the algorithm. Is that correct? Is that what you've been noticing?

Yeah, I know a lot of people do that, and I've seen it. I've even seen people, you know, writing several comments on their own posts, and it might well help with the algorithm, Con. You know, I don't debate that they've got some results from it, but I think it looks a little bit needy in my opinion. I don't, I don't like to do it. I think it looks a little bit desperate, a little bit needy. Um, I think it's fine to put a link in the first comment. I think that's fine. But, but, but writing comments on your own post and liking your own post, um, I, I don't think it sends the right sort of message. That's all.

Yeah, no, you're right. I agree. And people can see that. But on the other hand, if it, if it helps improve your exposure by the algorithm, then I suppose there is a bit of a benefit, but you've got to be just wary how you do it and how many times you do it. I think it's a great point you make. So let's— we've talked a little bit around the edges, Craig. Before we wind up for the night, and we are coming close to our time, let's talk a little bit about social selling and trying to define that for our listeners. And for those who are listening the first time, they're probably thinking, what is this social selling? They're probably going away, Google, then you can Google it. We do Google social selling, you'll come up with LinkedIn's definition of social selling. LinkedIn were the ones who I believe, and I think done some research in this, who created the term social selling because they were trying to at that stage to sell the Navigator product. Navigator is a premium product of LinkedIn and they were trying to push that and sell that and they coined the term social selling. And by coining the term, they also then created 4 pillars in relation to what social selling represents, and they aligned those pillars of 4 to the product that they were offering in the market in order to make it a bit more attractive for people to acquire. And then what they did is they assigned a percentage, a mark, a pass mark, a benchmark to those 4 pillars of 25, and those 4 combined would give you a score out of 100. Therefore, they were then able to sell or push what they call the Social Selling Index, which indicated to the individual on LinkedIn how they were performing on the platform based on those 4 pillars. Those 4 pillars are creating a powerful profile, connecting with the right people, sharing insights or building relationships with insights, whatever they call it, and the last one was around building those relationships. So the third one was about sharing insights and the last one is building effective relationships. And that's where the social selling really, in the way I practice it and probably the way Craig does it too, where it really starts to kick in is by building those relationships but then taking those relationships offline and starting to have conversations which lead to potential opportunities and sales. But before you do that, you must adopt those first 2 or 3 steps on LinkedIn in order to create that brand, that powerful brand, and start connecting with the right people and interacting for that matter and engaging with the right people as well. Craig, is that the way you perceive social selling?

Yeah, yes, Con. I think you can boil it down to building rapport. You want to engage with the right people and you want to build rapport with them. What you don't want to do is be spammy Sammy and connect and then hit them with a sales pitch. You know, you want to build rapport, take them through the know, like, and trust, and let the sales conversation evolve naturally. There'll come a point in a conversation where, you know, you're talking about projects you've done with, you know, that you've got in common, or you're talking about people you know, or maybe sharing some LinkedIn tips. There'll come a point in the conversation where they'll look at your profile and they'll get curious. And then they'll ask the question, so, you know, I'm interested, how is it you could help me? Or what is it you do? And at that point, it's a good time to then say, oh, well, actually, you know, I can send you something over email, we can have a Zoom call. And then you've kind of been given the permission to market your products or your services. So it's permission marketing.

And that's a very powerful word, Craig. I mean, we hear it a lot, but do we need to get permission to send people something, or can we just send them something? What's your approach to that?

I think, I think if you're sending them information, you know, so if you're sending them And it works well if it's not your information, if it's somebody else's information. I think, I think that that's totally acceptable. But if you're sending them something you've written, a presentation or something like that, I think you should ask their permission. I've written something, it might be of interest, can I send it to you?

Yeah, okay, that's a good one. Yeah, can I send it to you? And do you find that majority of people would say, yes, send it to me, Craig, I'd love to read it, or something along those lines. Do you get many?

I think, I think if you're at the right point in the conversation, then yes. But if you do it too soon, if you connect with them and then say, thanks for connecting, can I send you something? It's like, well, I don't know you, who are you?

Yeah, yep, you're right, exactly right.

You know, there's a natural defense on LinkedIn that, that, you know, and it's caused by these automation tools and these these funnels. There's a natural defense that if you connect, people are saying— people are waiting for that pitch. And so you've got to take that, um, they take that, um, apprehension off the table and have a natural conversation and let them get to, to know you. And, and, you know, it's like you would in a pub, wouldn't you? You'd meet somebody, you get to know them. Or at an exhibition. At an exhibition, you know, you're having a beer, you're meeting people. you're meeting somebody, you wouldn't go up to them and say, nice to meet you, there's my brochure, there's my business card, let me know if you want to buy anything.

Yeah, yeah. And that's— and we hear that a lot, don't we? That is in what we call, you know, I use the word the pub, but the pub test. Would you approach someone in a pub in that manner? If you wouldn't, then why would you do it on LinkedIn? Would you say to someone— would you go just into the pub and say to someone, here's my latest white paper, Enjoy. I mean, no. So why would you do it on LinkedIn? So we could actually say, okay, the phrase has been coined, you know, the pub test. Would you do this in a pub? If you're not, then why would you do it on LinkedIn? I think we take that approach, that's probably a good way forward, isn't it, Craig?

Yeah, and I think, you know, no one's on LinkedIn to be sold to, are they? They're not just, they're not just, uh, on there to go, oh, I'll connect with this guy because I really want to see his sales pitch. Um, they're on there to, to build relationships, to further their career, to increase their knowledge, um, get a promotion, uh, learn, learn, um, improve their LinkedIn game, whatever it might be. Um, and, and so you've got to think, well, you know, this, this, this person's connected to me, which is great. Um, don't go and spoil that by By being spammy Sammy and pitching too quick.

Yeah, you're right. That's exactly right. So once we define social selling, where do you think people then struggle to adopt it? Out of those 4, whether it be the profile, connecting with the right people, sharing insights, and then building relationships, out of those 4 pillars, where do you think people don't spend enough time, Craig?

I think people don't spend enough time commenting on other people's posts. I think there's too many people just transmit on LinkedIn. They just go post, post, post, here's my latest widget, and they wonder why they don't get engagement on those posts. I think limit the amount of sales posts that you do and earn the right to sell. Earn the right to sell by building relationships, building a network, building a tribe, building a tribe of 200 people, not, not 20,000, but 200 that, that, that, um, like your stuff, that know you. You comment on their stuff, they comment back, you've got a relationship with them. And then your posts will start to get, um, reach into second and third layer connections, and people will start to reach out to you because they like the comments you're making, they like the stuff you're putting out and your network will start to grow organically.

And I like that term you used there, Craig, and I think we should bottle this one. Earn the right to sell.

Yes.

I think that's something very powerful. And when we unpack that, it's about what I think I've heard you say too, we've used it a lot, which is know, build, and trust. What is it called?

No, no luck and trust. That's right.

Yeah, no luck and trust. And once you, once you've got that no luck and trust, then you can earn the right to sell. Again, you don't have to be spammy, but you, uh, well, you can get to a certain point where you've earned the right to sell to that individual, to that company. But it's only when you've done the hard work up front. Don't go doing it straight off the bat because it's not going to go down well. But once you've got that know, like, and trust all sewn up, you've earned the right to sell. I think Craig makes a really good point there about the approach we should be taking. And even a bigger, a more bigger point you make there, Craig, was about not enough people interact or engage on posts.

Yes.

And why do you think that is? Is it, you think people are, is it that imposter syndrome that maybe surrounds some people around who they are and what they do. Do you think that might be— well, I sense it is, but I don't know what you think.

Yeah, I'm in the engineering environment, you know, I working, and I talk to people a lot, you know, because they all direct message me. They've seen a post, they'll direct message, and I said, well, why don't you write that as a comment? Oh, I don't like to. And a lot of time they don't want their boss seeing it. Yes, that's a good point. Their opinion and let others shoot them down because it might be a technical opinion. And I think, I think in certain cultures, especially in the, in the Asian culture— I do a lot in India— they tend to be quite, quite shy about, about commenting. So they'll like a lot, but they don't like commenting. They're happy to have a chat over direct message, but they don't like commenting. So I think it's different for different industries, it's different for different cultures. So yeah, you know, we're in a little bubble of people who are in, you know, social selling and social media, so everybody's not afraid to express an opinion, but it's not the same in every industry.

So the moral of the story is don't judge everyone on the way you you perform or the way you act, be mindful that cultural or other reasons people can't interact as much as you may be interacting. So be mindful of that. And if they are talking to you privately, at least they're talking to you and they've enjoyed something you've posted, which is still a win for yourself.

Well, I think the direct message is the most powerful thing. I think that, you know, and I do it a lot, I'll put a post up and I'll think, oh, you know, the infotainment expert at Jaguar Land Rover who I know might be interested in this. And I will just click the 3 buttons and send the post. I don't tag them because people— a lot of people don't like being tagged. And I'll just send them, send them a— so I've just written this post, I thought you were— I thought you might be interested.

Yeah.

And I find that works quite well. And we'll have a discussion in direct message. And all the time you're building a, building a relationship. It's not a, it's not a a commercial post. It's not, this is my business, come and hire me kind of post.

Yeah.

It's about, it's about their industry. It might be about Jaguar Land Rover, it might be about, it might be about Aston Martin, but it's something that's relevant to them that they'll have an opinion about. So, so they don't mind. I think, I think when you start, you know, sending loads and loads of messages that are pitchy and not invited, I think you can alienate your network. So I think you've got to protect your network.

Great point, Craig. Great point. Okay, I think we're coming to the end of our conversation and our podcast here. So thanks again, Craig, for joining me. I think maybe next week we can start talking a bit about content creation because we know that's one of the 4 pillars is about sharing insights and creating relationships by Sharing insights. What I've called that is the education aspect of what we do in social selling. So by educating your audience, you start to develop that thought leadership. So we'll talk about that next week. So if you listen to this podcast, we do go live on Green Room every Wednesday, 12 PM BST. So that's British Standard Time, which is 12 PM. Okay. Every Wednesday, social selling tips and tricks. It's, uh, myself, Craig Langley, and we do have some guest mods or hosts that come on board. So someone like Mac, uh, Labusha, who's come on in the past, he might join us again, but looking to get others to also join us over the next couple of weeks. We'll have some other guests appearing on this, on this show. So thanks, Craig. Um, if people want to find you, Craig, what's the best way to get in touch with you, find you, locate you?

Yeah, well, LinkedIn's the best place. You know, I've actually got my URL set up as my, as my company name, so just type HJSAM into LinkedIn and I'll come up. I'm an open networker, so people can send me a message even if we're not connected. I can receive messages.

Right. And I'm Con Sotidis, and I'm also on LinkedIn. LinkedIn with Craig, so you can look up Con Sotidis or even look up the Social Selling Warrior as a hashtag, and you should be able to see my profile. That's a unique hashtag that I use, similar to what Craig does with his automotive posts. I use Social Selling Warrior for my posts, so you can search on that or search on the surname. The surname is very unique. There's only one of us on LinkedIn, so you won't find many other Sotidis. on LinkedIn, so it would be easy to track. So please connect with Craig and I. We're happy to have a conversation offline with anyone in relation to what we do and how we do it and support you in creating an effective brand that you can then leverage in order to garner more opportunities, and that can lead to more sales. So the sky's the limit by adopting social selling. So once again, Craig, thank you very much for joining us. Have a great night. Thank you, John.

No problem. Thank you.

Great day for you, great night for me, mate.

Great night for you. That's right. Thanks, Con. It's been a great conversation. I look forward to next week.

Okay. All the best and we'll talk to everyone next week and please tune into the Social Selling Warrior Anchor FM, what is it called, the podcast show and we'll see there the social selling tips and tricks. So thanks again, everyone. Thanks for joining us either live or on the podcast, and we look forward to talking to you again next week. Bye for now.

Thanks, everyone.