Prospecting on Linkedin & booking meetings | Ft. James'SayWhatSales'Buckley

Come on.

Interesting. How did you, like, become who you are on LinkedIn today? Because like you said, you started creating content. A lot of people started, you know, coming to you, inviting you to, you know, these events. Like, when did you realize, hey, today, you know what, I have to go big on LinkedIn.

So in 24, 14 and 15, I was only on Facebook and I, I never wanted to be on social media. Like, that was not a focus for me. I never wanted to, like, have all these accounts and manage all this stuff. Like, I didn't want that at all. But on Facebook, it was mostly humor. I'm a funny guy. I like humor. I like making people laugh. I like to laugh. So I was always posting this humor on Facebook and man, it was just getting a lot of traction. People laughing, people engaging. Oh, my God, you're so funny. So I had all these things happening for about a year. And then at the end of 2015, my first year at Cirrus Insight, towards the end of the year, I said, my new year's resolution is going to be that I want to use LinkedIn as much, if not more, than I use Facebook now. Best career decision I ever made because I took my focus off of social media as a purpose of Facebook and I put it into content for the purpose of generating business and pipeline. And all I did was I started sharing one minute videos about things I was doing that were working and things that I tried that didn't work. So after a couple weeks of this and seeing amazing amounts of traction on the content, I thought I should probably give this a name. And I did. I came up with say what sales for two reasons. One, in the 80s, when I grew up, say what was like a huge thing. Everybody was saying it, it was all over the place. And then one of the number one questions that I was getting at the time was, hey, what do I say when? What do I say when someone says this? What do I say when someone asks this question? What do I say? So say what? Sales was a natural thing that I landed on. What do you say? Say what? Like, no, you had. No way. You don't say that. Yes, I do. Right? Like, there was this element of, like, this is universal. Everybody understands this. It's like a giant macro that I'm attaching myself to. Wasn't long after that that somebody said, you know, so I had this friend, my friend, Kenneth Herring, shout out, Kenneth Herring, Mr. I Hate Mondays. Right? Hashtag Mr. I Hate Mondays. So Kenneth Haring was a brand unto himself that worked at Cirrus Insight. And he did this thing where he would get on for a minute and a half or so, and he would say, man, I hate Mondays. And he would say, let me tell you why I hate Mondays. I hate it. When. And then he would tell people why he hated Mondays, and everybody ate it up. He had a huge following. Lots of people liked it. At the end of every video, he would say, hashtag, I Hate. Hashtag, Mr. I Hate Mondays. We'll see you next week, right? And next. And then he would go. So I thought, well, I got to say something at the end of these videos, but I want to say something that's meaningful for people like me, salespeople. So I came up with, if you're a salesperson, we're the same person. And now people say it to me all the time, hey, man, we're the same person. Like, it just became this whole other animal that I didn't. I didn't even recognize at the time when I started saying it. But that catchphrase was a catalyst for so many different people to understand that they're not alone in the sales drama, if you will. They're not alone in saying, getting no all day, every day, like, yo, we are the same person. I know your pain was what I was after. And I was very fortunate. Many, many salespeople understood that and gravitated towards my content as a result of that catchphrase. But I will say that it wasn't until later that I jumped into Instagram. 2017, I believe I jumped into Instagram. And now what I've learned is that I can jump on any platform and it all feeds each other. So I get people that reach out to me on Twitter and they go, I follow you on LinkedIn. I get people that reach out to me on LinkedIn and go, I follow you on Instagram. I get people that follow me on Instagram, and they say, I follow you on Twitter. It's like bananas how circular it all is. And people just choose which platform they want to talk to me on, and I talk to them on every platform that they'll talk to me on. And that has been one of the number one drivers of conversation for me is meeting people where they spend their time. Great example. If you're looking at a prospect and you're trying to figure out what's the best way to reach out, and you look at their LinkedIn, and the last time they posted was yesterday. And then you look at Twitter, and the last time they posted was 2010, I promise you're not going to have any success reaching out on Twitter, you're going to have more success on LinkedIn, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that's understandable.

You say that because you're an experienced salesperson. Most young sellers that are new to the game especially will just continue to fire off emails. They'll just continue to dial and smile. They'll just continue to reach out on this platform that this person hasn't logged into for six years. I'm blown away at the amount of people that don't even bother to go find someone on LinkedIn, on, on Twitter, on Instagram, and figure out what kind of person is this. They don't even bother because they're not interested in that person. They're interested in selling their product and that's the wrong thing to be interested in.

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It come on.