475: If You’re In Sales, Influence is Your Job. With Peter Winick

Hey friends, are you familiar with the most trusted business network for business executives? It's the C-Suite Network. If you're a business of $5 million or greater and if you're VP level or higher, then you're invited to join the C-Suite Network to connect with your business peers. Go to csuitenetwork.com, that's c-suite-network.com, to learn more about the benefits, meetings, and services exclusive for C-suite executives like you. Okay, let's do the show. It's time to Accelerate. Hey friends, this is Andy. Welcome to episode 475 of Accelerate, where I hold in-depth conversations with today's leading experts in sales, marketing, and leadership 6 days a week. So a couple of quick items here before we begin the show. Please, if you haven't already, go to iTunes, subscribe to this show, leave us a review. We'd love to hear from you. And if you have any suggestions about topics or a guest that you'd like me to feature on Accelerate in an upcoming episode, then please send me a note at acceleratefm@gmail.com. That's acceleratefm@gmail.com. Now, if you're looking for new ideas on how to amp up your sales, then you need to get my free ebook titled How to Spark a Sales Turnaround. You can go to accelerate.fm/spark. That's spark as in S-P-A-R-K. It's based on my interviews with over 300 sales experts on the show about how they would boost their sales, and I've compiled the foundations into a practical step-by-step playbook that you can use to accelerate your sales today. So don't wait, go to accelerate.fm/spark to get your free copy of How to Spark a Sales Turnaround. So joining me on Accelerate today for a second time is Peter Winick. Peter is the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage. And Peter's built this really interesting company that enables thought leaders, authors, gurus, whoever, to monetize what they know, their knowledge, through books, keynote speaking, training services, products consulting, and so on. He's worked with a number of really high-profile people whose names you'd recognize. It's less high-profile people such as, such as myself, actually. So the topic we're going to talk about today is personal branding. You know, it's not just for the authors. It's not just for the well-known business people. It's for all of us, for anybody in sales, anybody who's customer-facing. We got to pay attention to our personal brand. So We're going to talk with Peter about that today. Peter Winick, welcome back to Accelerate.

Hey, thanks for having me. Good to be back.

Yeah, yeah. We live so close and we never see each other.

Exactly.

Or at least part of the time we live so close. So tell us a little bit about Thought Leadership Leverage. I mean, for people that maybe didn't hear the first episode that you were on way back in the day, over a year ago. So tell us a little bit about what you do.

Yeah, so Thought Leadership Leverage is a boutique consulting firm. We work exclusively with authors, thought leaders, and speakers that have content that has— typically it's an obvious business application, sometimes it's a tad less than obvious. Um, we build strategies, we build brands and platforms, we build products and solutions, and we build business for our clients. All right.

Very simple. Yeah. And straightforward. And I said people would recognize a lot of the people that you do work for, have done work for. So what I wanted to get into today sort of leveraging off what you do is there's a lot of attention being paid these days to this whole idea about personal branding. It's important for sales professionals, sales managers, virtually anybody, right, that is in business and perhaps has certainly a presence in terms of dealing with the outside world. Personal branding becomes real important. But as I've interviewed people about this and we've talked about it, it seems like something is missing in the conversation, which to me is what I brand sort of this idea of influence. To me, personal branding seems a little bit like window dressing, but what's missing is the attention to why somebody should talk to you. Why are you credible? Yeah. What's the influence you exert? So I just want to get your take on that.

Yeah, so I think if you go back in your— I don't know, it would be history books, but 20 years when sort of the personal branding movement or wave came out, you're going back to Fast Company and Tom Peters and A Brand Called You. I think the concept there was stand out from the pack. Be a little bit different. Don't be a cog in the wheel. How do you get others to notice you, but primarily within the confines of a corporate environment? Look to your left at the cube and look to your right in your cube. How do you stand out a little bit? So some of the attributes of a personal brand might be you're reliable, or you're someone I could, I could count on, or you've always got a fun story to tell, or whatever the case may be. And I'm not anti-personal brand, nor do I think you are, but I think it's sort of table stakes today. And I don't think it's enough to differentiate, given that if you look at where we are now versus where we were 20 years ago, I used to anxiously await the monthly arrival of my big, thick Fast Company magazine on my desk once a month. I do not know what I wait for once a month anymore. It is bills from American Express, but it is now, it is immediate gratification. To your point, influence or I would probably use the term thought leadership is a way to enhance personal branding. Again, you could do all the personal branding you want, but what do you want your brand to be? I always default towards thought leadership and say, what is it that you've got a perspective on that you can share with others that will benefit them in what they do personally or professionally?

Yeah, I was trying to stay away from that term just because I think— Too many letters in it perhaps, but it sounds more intimidating, right? I mean, hopefully people understand the concept of influence because that's ultimately your job if you're out marketing or selling is you're trying to reach the customer at those moments where they're open to being influenced to making a decision to do business with you.

Yeah, no, no, I, I think that's right. And I think it's, it's somewhere between influence and, you know, thought leadership and differentiation, right? So influence comes, it doesn't come from deploying sort of these old school tactics of how do I manipulate Andy to do something that he doesn't want to do. Influence in my mind How do I get Andy to do something that he does want to do, but maybe not at the pace that he would have done it without my doing something to prod him along the way in a positive way? It's not about manipulation, and it's not about taking advantage. But it's just that little bit of horse whispering, a little bit of persuasion, a little nudge, if you will. But you were going to go there directionally anyway, maybe against your timetable, against My timetable. Right.

So if you look at somebody from a personal branding these days, you said it's table stakes. I think that's true, but it's interesting how much attention is being paid to it now. And again, there are multiple books being published in the last year, some very recently. I've had guests on the show. We've talked about it that focus on this. And so I wonder what's sort of out there that is making this— I'll start with the personal brand— is making that urgent again?

My belief on that is, let's first put out that your personal brand could be good or bad, positive or negative, or smart or stupid. I think there are now at everybody's fingertips lots and lots of tools from your iPhone to your camera, your camera in your phone, video, to all the social platforms that make the perception That is, oh, it's really easy to have a personal brand. Let me just go on Instagram 38 times a day and let me go Facebook Live every 5 minutes and do that at the click of a button. That being said, if I wasn't sure you have nothing to say and you're saying a lot of nothing, you've confirmed my suspicions. I think there's a risk of having access to all these things to broadcast mediocrity. I think that's where the thoughtfulness comes in to say, yeah, okay, great. We're blessed that we live at a time where it's never been easier, quicker, faster, cheaper to get thoughts out there and influence others in your language, Andy, but am I really putting things out there that are representative of what I'd like people to believe about me, to think about me, to say about me when I'm not in a room? People might, you want the term narcissism looked at? Do you want people saying, does anybody really care that Peter had a turkey sandwich for lunch today because he felt the need to broadcast that on 3 platforms? I'd say, yeah, that's narcissistic or egocentric. I think when it comes to influence, my personal belief is every time you have a touchpoint from me, how am I influencing you inside of a lane that I've chosen to be my lane of influence. I might have an opinion on a glass of Cabernet, but I'm not a wine expert. It doesn't really matter if I'm sharing with you that I had this lovely glass of Cabernet, because that's not what people are coming to me for. How do you keep it in your lane and your domain and your expertise to say, yeah, I'm influenced? For example, you, Andy, you influence me and lots and lots of others. All things sales. I know you personally, that you swim and you run and there's all these other— you bike ride across Europe, that's cool. We've talked about that personally as friends. If you just started randomly putting all that stuff out there in a non-organized way, I'm going to get confused around what is Andy really about? Is it sales? Is it one part sales, two part biking, three part traveling through Europe? I don't know, I'm getting confused.

You forgot the gin and vermouth. Peter Winick.

Yeah.

So it raises an interesting question though because certainly some of the advice that people get about building their personal brand online and we're saying— let's sort of say that's sort of a precursor to establishing influence is that they need to show more of themselves personally, that this day and age requires that people see the human behind whomever is providing advice.

Yeah, so I think having the courage to have a little transparency and to be human is great. The reality is, if you're somebody that is selling, I don't know, some complex cloud-based data storage software something, something, something, and I'm the enterprise buyer at a Fortune 100, do I really care that you did a half marathon last weekend? Do I, you know, and I think that's really a question of, do I know you well enough that I do care, that I do have a vested interest in you? And that's really a function of how well you connect with your clients and prospects. So I may, or I may not. And I think sometimes people almost intrude on putting their stuff out to people that don't really care and have, and you don't really, you haven't really earned that level of develop that level of rapport relationship to be able to share freely with them your entire life.

And so is one of the— okay, I mean, so it raises a thought, you know, as I think about that, is, is let's say, you know, sales professional just in general, as you said, give the example selling a complex enterprise software SaaS offering to a Fortune 100. We know that when you make contact with a customer or a potential customer, they are going to go search your, at least your LinkedIn profile. They may, who knows, they may look you up on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram as well. Does everybody really need to be that mindful about putting something out there that a potential customer may see?

Um, well, I think you only need to be mindful if you're stupid, right? Like, so if there's lots of pictures of you on Facebook drinking and binging and doing silly things, not smart. Um, I think the difference that I— the point that I was trying to make, there is a difference between Having elements of your life out there for people to find in a pull-down, right? So if I'm researching on you, Andy, or anybody, and find things on Facebook, that's kinda cool. That's different than you pushing it on me.

Mm-hmm, okay.

And I think that's the difference. Got it. So as long as you're not doing anything you're embarrassed of, or is shameful, or silly, or highly controversial, sure, put it out there. Doesn't mean you should push it to me.

Right.

Okay.

Well, that's good advice. So let's sort of take that then as the platform and say, "Okay. Personal brand, table stakes.

Be careful.

Be mindful of what you're communicating." So now one of the real issues is we get to this idea of influence, thought leadership. And some people are very strong on either side of the equation in terms of should individual sales professionals be What's their role in terms of creating content, creating something unique about themselves in terms of what they think, what they feel, their passions relative to the business they're in?

Yeah, so I think there's actually a spectrum there. I think you have— and the spectrum is really dictated at the organizational or enterprise level, or at least the perception is, right? There are some companies that say, you're a robot, you're salesperson number 982, and here is all the body of content that you should feel free to publish and push out there to develop your influence. By the way, everybody's is the same, so there's no differentiation. This is the corporate-approved— propaganda might be too strong of a word, but these are the things that we approve. Actually, we've got somebody in marketing that curates articles that you can all push out, whatever, but it's all the same vanilla ice cream. That's one end of the spectrum, a very controlled, communication message. And sometimes that's from a culture of a company. Other times it's a compliance regulatory issue, right? Like in financial services or pharmaceuticals or something like that. So there's constraints that we have in certain industries. The other end of the spectrum is really the free-for-all where the organization basically says, hey, do whatever you want. You know, all good. We trust you. You're adults. You're smart. You're not gonna do anything stupid. Do whatever you want. Then the question becomes, it's a little more fun, it's a little more creative. What do you choose to put out in the world to gain influence? Industry news could be interesting. Analysis is interesting. I think one of the ways to gain influence today, I think there's two primary ways to do it that don't require boatloads of time. Number one is not just sharing information. People always do that, right? Hey, Andy, I read this great article, thought you might like it. Okay, that's sort of cool. The level above that is, Andy, I read this great article and thought you might like it. And by the way, here's 3 things that came to my mind when I read it as it relates to what we were discussing last Tuesday around your business. So a little bit of analysis and thoughtfulness and personalization, not just mailing an article you read in Fortune to 800 of your quote closest friends, right? That's number 1. Number 2 is original thoughts, original content, if you will. Either commentary or analysis on a thoughtful piece that is in a respectable publication of sorts, or original thoughts that you have. It could be, hey, Andy, I know you are in the same industry that I am in. I went to this conference last week, and I heard 3 people speak, and here is a couple of things that I took away from it that I thought might be of interest to you based on our history and what I know you're working on, blah, blah, blah. That's interesting. Be thoughtful, customize it, and put the effort in to make the receiver go, wow, that was really nice of Andy to think about me and put that together. Wow, his insight is pretty good. I'm looking forward to the next time he sends me something because that Andy is a pretty smart fellow.

Yeah. You notice in that, because I use that exact same framework, is you're not asking actually asking for anything. You're just sharing at that point. Right. Exactly. That's the thing that I think is hard for salespeople. It's sort of a— we talk about behavior change and habits and formation and so on is there's this trigger that salespeople have been trained to sort of respond to, which is contacting a customer. When I contact a customer, that triggers me to say, "I need to ask for something." behavior changes when you get that trigger of contacting a customer is that you provide them something, you'd be of service to them, you share something with them.

Yeah, no, every time I hear your name or see it come up on my cell or my email and you're asking me something, asking me for something, uh, I'm not looking forward to that as much as if, you know, 6 or 8 times out of 10 you're giving me something that's just interesting or of value to me, or I can apply to my world, um, then I'm way more likely to take your call, right? Because— but I think that comes from a place of generosity, uh, uh, you know, and, and I think that's really a mindset that you have to live by.

Yeah, I think, I think it's a habit, right? I think that this is so— you know, if you're a sales rep, you're not making proactive calls to a customer. And yeah, you've got to hit certain— so many— you can make so many contacts, you're trying to build, you know, pipeline Yep. You really need to start factoring into your process that, look, yeah, I may have 2 or 3 touches before I ask them anything.

Well, and then, you know, the other side of that coin, Andy, is, is, and you've probably experienced this as well, is, wow, you know, you're the nicest guy in the world and you're so responsive and you're so thoughtful and blah blah blah. Now here we are 12 days after I've signed the contract and, uh, Wow, I guess Andy doesn't like me anymore. Here I am 2 months— we're post-transaction and there's not an immediate transaction hanging out there. All of a sudden, my phone stops ringing. All of a sudden, I don't get any more emails. That's a great opportunity to continue to build and develop and strengthen the relationship through influence without any preconceived notion of there's a direct something in it for me right now. Playing the long game versus the short game. I think a lot of salespeople today, because they're compensated on a quarterly basis, forget that business is a long game. I don't know how many quarters you and I have known each other, because I don't think in those terms, but it's like—

A lot, yes.

Right. There's lots of them. Do I ever think about what can Andy do for me this quarter because I have a number to make? No. I think salespeople, sometimes they're in that cadence, and they don't realize By not communicating with someone when you're not in a transaction, that actually sends a message as well.

Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people, and this is, I think, sort of central to this issue is that salespeople sort of think that, yeah, a lot of that's being done by our content marketing, right? That, that, you know, by the time this lead gets to me, if it's coming through a marketing sales qualified lead, yeah, they've sort of gotten all that. No, no, this is talking about you and your relationship. You as a sales professional, your relationship your— I'll call it a relationship— your relationship with the buyer. So you are the key person right now. It's been transitioned to you. It's your influence that's really important if you are able to establish it. That starts again with sharing. It's not like, "Okay, we've done all the sharing we need to do with this guy. Now it's right down to it. Let's see. Let's ask, fall into discovery." It may not work that way. And it may not be to your advantage to work that way.

Yeah, I've never met a buyer that thinks of themselves in the language that a seller does, right? Nobody wakes up today and says, today I'm Andy's prospect, today I'm Andy's warm lead.

I'm his sales qualified lead.

Yeah, I'm his sales qualified lead. That's who, that's how I self-identify today. I am his, I'm his influencer today. But, but as you know, sales professionals, we put those labels on people, and words are important. If that's all, if I only think of Andy as a prospect or a warm lead, you never become a colleague, a friend, or someone that might respect me or admire me. And, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's not a good thing. Yeah.

Well, I mean, you really foreclose the, the, uh, at that point you foreclose the, the ability to have any sort of, I don't know, again, relationship, if you will, uh, that will lead to an order. And yeah, use relationship in sort of a broader, broader context there. It's not like you're developing a close personal friendship.

Yep. I think to your point of influence, one of the things to be thinking about is in sharing something or some analysis or whatever, you're doing what personal branding promised to do 20 years ago, which is differentiate yourself, but the stakes are much higher today because the scarcest resource that most people have today is not money, it's their time.

Right? Exactly.

So if you can give me an idea or a thought, and it saved me time of going to an event or reading a whole bunch of things, that's incredibly valuable to me today. And what that means is I'm going to be way more apt to want to put you in front of people that I admire and respect because you provided value to me outside of what I expected. I mean, doing what you say you're going to do in the timeframe that you said it, that's your job, right? Influencing me is above and beyond your job to create that stickiness and differentiation, which was again, some of the core principles of personal branding are embedded in this influence concept, but the stakes are higher and it's a different game today.

Yeah. I think if we get down to specific tactics on some of this is you talked about don't just share something, share something with original content around it, right? Here are 3 points I think are really interesting that we should discuss.

You rarely—

I mean, I rarely see that. I get tons of inbound emails all the time. Rarely, rarely see that. That's one of my strong recommendations. I mean, my standard training includes that. Similarly is go comment on places. If you see somebody sharing something on LinkedIn and increasingly, you know, people aren't seeing the discussions in the discussion groups. You're seeing them you know, in the, in the main, main threads is people coming out and posing questions. Well, see one that's interesting, respond to it, say something original, you know, put your perspective out there.

And that's a great point, Andy, because sometimes people are— they lack the confidence, they're afraid, it's an unknown to sort of, quote, publish original content. Uh, there's nothing better than a good question. Right. So even if you say, oh man, I, you know, I'm not a writer. I don't want to write an article. I don't know how to research, but a thoughtful question is really, really, you know, sometimes more valuable than a 2,000-word article.

Well, yeah. I mean, that's, that's, yeah, that's even better than what I suggested, which was, you know, comment on questions, but yeah. Have the— originate the question yourself. So what are the key questions that your prospects are asking?

Right.

What are their key concerns that you're seeing? Address that.

I think you can do that in real time as well. I've seen people do it now that I think about it at events that I've been to or people speaking, et cetera, where a speaker or an expert, subject matter expert, whatever, is talking for an hour and you're thinking, I think I'm the dumbest guy in the room because I didn't understand the first 3 things that he said, but I'm embarrassed to ask the question of what did you mean by dot, dot, dot, and then somebody else has the courage to do it and you're like, thank you. If you didn't get it, Either you are the dumbest guy in the room, which is typically not the case for most of us, or other people didn't. It's an opportunity for you to ask the question that other people will go, "Wow, I'm really glad Andy asked that because I was sort of thinking about it," or, "I was thinking about it, but hey, thanks for asking that." That's another way to sort of get some or develop some influence.

Yeah, and I think that the key to this, and you brought this up, is if you're going to participate, start building your influence, is you have to serve let go of your anxieties about the fact that some people may not agree with you. Now, I can speak for this, and you know this, Peter. I mean, as an author, I've written a couple books and speak in public all the time. And when you first start doing it, your biggest fear is that someone is going to disagree with you and tell you that. And then you find out that really, unlike some sites you could be on online where people revel in calling you an idiot, By and large, my experience has been in business, on LinkedIn for sure, that's not a forum where people are going to attack you in that way.

Peter Winick: No. I mean, I think that's the days of Yahoo chat boards or whatever from the Stone Age where you had a bunch of whatever Dungeons and Dragons playing folks that lived in their mom's basement that grew internet balls that thought it was proper etiquette to just belittle people or something. People typically don't do that in a professional forum. I could disagree with you. I can disagree with you with the utmost respect and still think you're smart and thoughtful. But I think there's more decorum on LinkedIn and forums. And it makes whoever's doing that look like a dodo bird. Yeah.

But I mean, you have to— exactly. And you have to have the courage a little bit just to, as I said, drop the anxieties.— and that first comment you leave or that first question that you post or the first time you send an article to a prospect and put your own perspective on it, if they don't agree, they don't agree. That's OK. That's an occasion for a discussion.

Yeah. No, no, no. If you're filtering things or doing your own editing and say, "Oh, man. I have to please everybody or everybody has to agree." then it probably isn't a thought worth sharing, right? I mean, it should either, you know, give me to think in a way I didn't think, or even if I disagree with you, by disagreeing with you, you're forcing me to challenge some of my thoughts, which is incredibly valuable. Right.

And I think there's a sort of final aspect to discuss, which is that especially if you're a sales professional and you're saying, okay, how does this influence thing tie into my idea for my ideas for advancing in my own career? Getting recruited to a new job outside the company, more responsibility within your current company, or actually being elevated to a management role or something, the influence thing is really important there. It's not your personal brand, at least I don't think so. I mean, I looked at people that I've— organizations I've worked with and people I've promoted. Influence— I was thinking about that before you and I spoke— is Influence is really the key thing. It wasn't sort of the superficial things. It was, you know, where's the value they were creating and how does that represented?

Yeah. And we used to call it, uh, you know, back in the day, hiring the good sales rep was, oh, you're buying a Rolodex, right? Well, what was the role of it? What did that really mean? You're, you're buying someone that has access and influence to people. It's not necessarily that their communication skills are the best or their negotiation skills or whatever, but there's a sphere of influence that they have. That comes with the package. I think in today's world, your transferable influence outside of your current job today is your content and your thinking and such. All things considered, if you're going to hire somebody and one person has a nice history of thought leadership influence, etc., online, you sort of get that for free as, as the employer going, well, that's pretty cool. Like, okay, that's an added bonus that I get for free. That's sort of— that could be a tiebreaker.

Yeah, I always harken back to a comment, uh, one of my early bosses— I think it was maybe my first boss, you know. I was asking him, so how do you, how do you know when to promote somebody? And his answer says, well, when they're already doing the job.

Yeah, exactly.

And so if you think about that, is, you know, you as an individual creating some influence with your customers, but that's also influence that other people are seeing within your organization or perhaps recruiters or another company that perhaps might be interested in you. This is also part of the importance, right? Is having good quality content, thoughtful content, consistent content that you're putting out there that represents your point of view. Somebody may want to hire that point of view.

Well, and to your point, if you're waiting for the day where, let's say you're a junior sales rep, where your sales manager comes out and says, okay, now everybody has to do some content development, content creation or something, and you're being told to do it, it's probably too late. There was more value if you did it before. To your point, do the job that you want. Do it before. Be told to do it, assuming you're not breaking any, uh, uh, compliance issues and such. Why do you, you know, if you're always waiting, wait to be told what to do, that's not a big differentiator in a very competitive marketplace today.

Yeah, right. And I agree with you. I think compliance issues notwithstanding, if you have those, you have those, you got to play by the rules. But for the vast majority of companies, if you're an individual sales professional, the great, great thing about the era you live in is you can Yeah, you can set up a unique personal brand, but to really make that powerful is the tools exist for you to go and contribute more from an intellectual standpoint, a thought leadership standpoint that adds value for the customers and adds value to you and sets you up for success with sales and sets you up for success in your career.

Yeah. No, I totally agree with that.

Oh, excellent. That's a good way to end the show with Peter completely agreeing with me. So Peter Winick. Thanks as always for coming on the show, but tell folks how they can find out more about you and connect with you.

Sure. So they can check out the site, which is thoughtleadershipleverage.com, or they can obviously email me directly at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com.

Perfect. Good. Well, again, thanks for being on the show. And friends, thank you for spending this time with me today. Make sure you join us again tomorrow. And until then, if you get a chance, please go to iTunes, subscribe to this podcast, leave a review. We really want to hear what you have to say. Positive or negative, uh, anything we could do to help improve the show, really want to hear it. So again, thanks for joining us. Until next time, this is Andy Paul. Good selling, everyone.