Advanced Selling For Speakers
I’m James Taylor and you’re listening to the SpeakersU Podcast, a show for aspiring and professional speakers. This episode is with my co-host Maria Franzoni. Enjoy the episode.
I’m James Taylor, keynote speaker, and speaker business coach and this is the SpeakersU Podcast. If you enjoy listening to conversations that will help you launch and grow your speaking business faster than your thought possible, then you’ve come to the right place. Each week we discuss marketing strategies, sales techniques, as well as ideas to increase the profitability of your speaking business and develop your craft. You’ll find show notes for today’s episode as well as free speaker business training at speakersu.com.
In this episode:
- Sales Professionals
- Running Peer Groups
- High Achievers Role
- Masterminds For Clients
- LinkedIn Tips
Artificial Intelligence Generated Transcript
Below is a machine-generated transcript and therefore the transcript may contain errors.
I’m James Taylor and you’re listening to the SpeakersU Podcast, a show for aspiring and professional speakers. This episode is with my co-host Maria Franzoni. Enjoy the episode.
I’m James Taylor, keynote speaker, and speaker business coach and this is the SpeakersU Podcast. If you enjoy listening to conversations that will help you launch and grow your speaking business faster than your thought possible, then you’ve come to the right place. Each week we discuss marketing strategies, sales techniques, as well as ideas to increase the profitability of your speaking business and develop your craft. You’ll find show notes for today’s episode as well as free speaker business training at speakersu.com.
Sales Professionals
James Taylor 0:00
I’m James Taylor, and you’re listening to the SpeakersU podcast, a show for aspiring and professional speakers. This episode is with my co-host, Maria Franzoni. Enjoy the episode. Today we are joined by not one, but two guests today, which is fantastic Bill Caskey. Bryan Neale, co-host of the advanced selling podcast. We started this podcast 14 years ago and have over 100 episodes up on both LinkedIn following 12,000 group members that each have their own sales coaching practices and team up every week to deliver tips, strategies, attitudes for today’s professional salesperson. So if you’re looking to get some great advice on increasing sales, then you’re going to love this episode. Please welcome bill and Brian. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bill Caskey 0:49
Greetings. Good
Bryan Neale 0:50
afternoon.
You were hoping for Billy Ray Cyrus sorry. Yeah. The point. Make you sing. I love that you made a Billy Ray Cyrus reference that was and I love that your name is James Taylor. I know you’ve done the right. I was like this. How that couldn’t be any cooler couldn’t be cooler – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Maria Franzoni 1:08
about me.
Bryan Neale 1:12
Your name Maria tells me about your heritage. I’m guessing, right? Yeah, I’m guessing Franzoni isn’t native to England?
Maria Franzoni 1:20
Maybe it is, I don’t know. Her full name is Maria Luisa Antonella Franzoni.
Fantastic. Well, listen, let’s dive in. Because it’s wonderful to have two sales experts here when all of us need more sales, we all need more business. And I actually want to start with something that has always bugged me ever since I’ve been in the speaking industry, this idea that the sales kickoff meeting should happen once, once a year, you’re going to get everybody motivated, you’re going to do the sales kickoff meeting. And that’s enough for everybody to sell for the whole year. Does that make sense to you sales professionals? Brian, why – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bill Caskey 2:03
don’t you take this one?
Bryan Neale 2:05
I’ll go. No, it does not make sense. And here’s why. The idea of it is great. It’s this big event. And it’s fun. And we get this energy. The other thing we get is we get a lot of the people going out and having drinks and cocktails and they get hung over and you know, and then they’re not as effective as they can be. That’s not everybody, but that happens. And then they get inundated, inundated with information. Absolute complete overload. Because the sales leaders who produce these things, try to squeeze as much stuff as they can into this little minute part of time and crunch as much info, product info Ops, info, stuff about the CRM, sales, training, sales, coaching, product updates, awards, all this jazz, when everyone leaves, it’s all soup, it’s all soup in their mind, there’s nothing that sticks, I would much rather us see a quarterly or a bi-monthly Town Hall check-in that is hyper-focused on a few small, really, really punchy topics than one big broad list trying to cram it all into January and just check the box that we did it. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Maria Franzoni 3:14
And that makes sense. And I imagine Actually, it’s quite useful for any sales professional to have the fact that they’ve got 800 800 podcasts that they can consume on various topics from you guys to keep them in the right mindset because a lot of it’s about mindset, isn’t it? – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bryan Neale 3:29
Yes, yes. Yeah, it
Bill Caskey 3:30
And I just added a little bit to what Brian said there. I agree wholeheartedly. I think that if you’re using a retreat or a full-day program for bonding, and rapport, and cocktails, I think there’s nothing better and we’ve been absent out in the last year. So I think there’s a lot of advantages, but it’s not a development tool. It’s not where you’re going to transform people. And that’s what that’s saved for coaching that Brian and I do for our clients. You can transform people over time, hard to do it in an hour and 15 minutes, you know, you just it’s just hard to do. So it’s more of an idea-sharing and bonding and rapport, but it’s not really good for coaching and training and really getting different results from people. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
James Taylor 4:10
So in this time that we’re living in just now all COVID periods, or maybe we’re going to go into the hybrid period after this, but how should salespeople approach virtual selling as opposed to the traditional in person selling?
Bryan Neale 4:22
Yes. I’ll take a stab. We’ll take a stab at this one. The great thing is James is we’ve been virtual selling. And if you have decided you’re gonna dabble in virtual selling, you’ve probably already been left behind. So this thing is here to stay. And I believe it’s here to stay and I’m not a crystal ball person. But when I think about it now I talked to all the business owners that we work with and CEOs of private equity on companies and people like that. There’s no race to return to office number one. Number two, they’re realizing from a cost and efficiency standpoint. They don’t need the office. They can They can, you know, strip out some of those costs, they need collaborative workspace, but not the old school office where we go. And so if anyone listening to this has not yet bought into the idea that it’s not even going to be called for me virtual selling, it’s just selling, it just happens to be that I’m doing it looking into a camera, and I have to learn to do it this way, I’ve got to learn to be comfortable looking into a camera, and not staring even at the people’s eyes, I actually look at the green dot because that’s where their eyes You know, when they see that that makes an impact and getting microphones and all these things everyone has to buy. And if you’ve not bought in on that you’re going to be left behind. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bill Caskey 5:36
Yeah, I also think that you know, I think we need to think about how do we mirror the face-to-face experience as best we can on virtual? And it’s never going to be exactly the same. But like Brian said, you know, are do you have a good camera? Do you have good audio? Are you do you have good slides? Not with 1700 bullet points on each slide. But do you have pictures and graphics? And can you communicate your value in a different way? And so I just think it’s important that we look at the experience and say, what kind of experience are we giving people here today. And you know, Brian’s got his notes from up there. So if he does train now, I’ve got an easel, he’s got a whiteboard, we can mirror a little bit of that. So we’re not just we don’t just put our mugs in front of the green. we. Actually, it looks like we’re actually there training. And I think from a coaching and training standpoint, there’s a lot of things you can do. But for selling, you just got to get good at the new technology. This is here to stay. It’s not going anywhere. We’ll go back to face-to-face meetings. But man, if you can do virtually instead of flying across the country, why not? Especially if it mirrors the experience. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
James Taylor 6:41
But what that’s you know that I remember going back when I was at school, why my Saturday sales job, and one of the things I enjoyed kind of was just being around other salespeople. And there’s that you’re kind of, you’re learning from them all the time you’re listening, and you’re hearing how they sell and how they deal with objections. And it’s also that little bit of a competitive thing. I saw something in China the other day, where they’ve actually got a whole room because they did not have to do the social distance thing. They’ve got people can standing next to each other with their little cameras mounted on a big room with their yet with their beauty light, I guess. And they’re all individual selling in a room of like maybe 50 salespeople, and they’ve got a big board up in front of them and assuring that the stats, like who’s closing those deals? And it’s like, it’s like a high-pressure kind of salesroom. But with influences, I guess. So how do we create some of those good things that maybe we might be missing from the in-person that that little bit of competitive spirit? Well, and also the learning piece? – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bryan Neale 7:39
Yes. I didn’t go.
Bill Caskey 7:41
Yeah, I was just gonna say, first off, I think I think you’re right. I think salespeople generally are social creatures. We’re just social, we like to be around people and bouncing ideas and giving each other static and, you know, punking other people. I mean, we love that that’s just who we are. So you take that away from us. And what are we left with a studio with a camera with light and nobody else is around? And I think that’s where the value of small group coaching or small group connection if nothing else comes in. So get some of your buddies and ladies and guys who are close to you who want to grow and find you know, four or five of them and meet once a week on zoom are on technology. And let that suffice until which time we can get back in the office. But something is better than nothing. And you don’t wait for the top of your don’t wait for the VP of sales to pair you up into groups of four and say you do it yourself. Just go do it. You don’t need to wait for permission to do this. And just go find four or five other people who think as you do and who want to grow and just come together once a week or a couple of times a month. And you wouldn’t you’d be surprised at how much growth you can get from that. And James, what you just described is its accountability. It’s sharing ideas. It’s man, I tried this seven times, and it works six times, and everybody else should be what the hell, what did you say? I want to try that. But if you don’t have that, you’re alone, you’re alone, you’re isolated. And that’s not healthy mentally or from a sales result in standpoint. And I didn’t know they were called beauty – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Running Peer Groups
Bryan Neale 9:09
lights. I just call them like decent-looking lights. Trying to like do anything to help. I just had a group of 12 VPS of sales. It’s a peer group that we run here. They were in here for three hours. That’s what all the jibberish is on the board behind me. But to Bill’s point, when you bring people together, something magic happens. It just does. And you can create that yourself or find a peer group like Bill runs peer groups, I run peer groups, we run peer groups together. That’s where people need a place to land these days because it’s lonely. It’s lonely looking into the camera and there are places out there that they can find that will give them that camaraderie fix. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
James Taylor 9:46
Maybe we can invent that virtual Bell we need to close those big deals and ring the bell are you going through?
Maria Franzoni 9:53
I got one I’ve got one. No, you’re gonna mention it. Yeah, yeah. Used to ring him. Yeah, yeah.
Bryan Neale 9:59
We Little dancing zebra that goes around to our whole company. When we close the deal here, this is a little meme or GIF that as a little or you call this
Maria Franzoni 10:07
meme, I thought you had somebody dressed up and you made them to
say, Sorry, Bill,
Bill Caskey 10:16
autographs. Good to say, john, we talked about this the other day, john Maxwell, who’s a leading leadership author, he’s written many, many books. And he calls it the transformation table. And it’s a it’s a physical table, if you can envision that way with four or five people around it, talking about the most important issues, better strategies, exchange, exchanging ideas, helping people think through things. And napoleon hill called it the third mind, you know, there’s the Brian mind and the bill mind. And when we come together, there’s a third mind that’s created a third force that never would have been created had two people not come together and share it. And I think that’s the value of those small groups is, things come out of that you wouldn’t expect that never would come out of you with sitting in alone in a studio with a blank piece of paper trying to figure things out. So it’s really valuable. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Maria Franzoni 11:04
I love the fact that there’s this phone’s going in the background cuz I know Brian, your office with people which we know exists, they’re probably ringing up saying, bye, bye. Sounds happening.
Bryan Neale 11:17
Everyone’s being nice and quiet, that these might be sales calls coming in? For I don’t know. Yeah, kind of delete them. So we’ll see. Hopefully not. Yeah.
Maria Franzoni 11:24
And I cannot believe how big is that whiteboard behind you
Bryan Neale 11:29
very big, I don’t even know it’s almost the entire, but it’s fantastic. It’s just fantastic.
Maria Franzoni 11:34
I want one now for the whole one.
Bill Caskey 11:37
You can get up there again.
Maria Franzoni 11:39
Something else that bothers me a great deal. And I have come from sales and I at heart, I’m a sales person I always will be because I do think it’s it’s so important. And I find that whenever there’s any training or any focus on any development within sales, it’s always the guys who are struggling that get all the attention. The people who are achieving the people who are doing really well, the one who’s perhaps the one person who’s doing 80% of the business, and then the other 80% of the people who are doing 20% of the business, they get all the attention and that one high achiever is just left or they’re fine. They don’t need to have got time they’re too busy. They don’t need anything. Is that the right approach?
Bill Caskey 12:16
No, I think Brian, Brian, and I agree on most things, I think we can agree on this, too. I think that there are a couple of mistakes companies make is they use the blow-up balloon, the big bucket approach, we just throw everybody into this big bucket and we teach everybody the same thing. And to be honest with you, I think high achievers, already know the right language. Many times they know they’re seasoned vets, they know how to get in front of people. The question for them is, how can you scale your business? How do you really build? How do you take this knowledge that you have and leverage it up so that instead of doing a million a year, you can do 3 million a year? And I think high achievers just get ignored. They just get ignored because they say don’t bother Maria. She’s doing fine. Let’s not spend any time and money on her on all this time, Maria’s like well wait a minute, I’ve got an upside potential. I’ve gotten more in the tank, I can do more. But if you just get thrown into the least common denominator bucket with a bunch of new salespeople, you’re not going to get much out of that you won’t get anything out of it. It’s a double negative, but you won’t get as much as if you’re surrounded by other like-minded, you know, seasoned vets and winners, you can make a lot of progress there. So I agree with you. I think that’s a mistake to throw everybody in the same bucket. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
High Achievers Role
Bryan Neale 13:28
It’s also I get a unique perspective and I’m a referee American football in the National Football League, which I know a lot of your listeners are probably not from here, but they probably heard of that. And I get to be around these great players and great coaches in a practice scenario. And what I’ve noticed is two things. Number one, you earn the you earn your way to get coached. So by your performance, you earn the attention of the coach and there are certain positions in the football field on American football that there’s actually a position coach for the called the linemen or the receivers. And you earn by by performing on the field you get more attention, you don’t perform in practice, they start to ignore you. And that’s how the great get greater and greater and greater. That’s point two is the true Hall of Famers, the ones that the greatest person I got to see up close and personal getting Peyton Manning that is one of the greatest people to play American football ever. And he asked more questions than a three year old in practice. After winning the Super Bowl and multiple Hall of Fame. He’s a Hall of Fame guy, multiple Pro Bowls that these are all big things in American football. He would constantly ask questions and get advice from his coaches, almost to a point of annoyance. Those to me are the reasons that you got to coach high achievers. Got to – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Maria Franzoni 14:44
know I love that. And do the high achievers have any responsibility themselves to help those that are struggling or is that not their role?
Bryan Neale 14:55
It’s a good question, Maria.
Bill Caskey 14:57
If you meet me To me if you believe I’ll just do it real quick here to be if you believe that by teaching somebody you get better than Yes they do. Because it’s not just you’re helping the other person, you’re also helping yourself by framing things and teaching, instructing people. It helps you to become better because you’re more aware of things when you have to go teach them. So I think from that standpoint, yeah, I think they kind of owe it to them and what to themselves. But, but all depends on the company and the culture. But yeah, I think high achievers should be coaching because they’ll get better because of it. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bryan Neale 15:35
I see. There’s a, one of my favorite authors is a guy named Richard Bach. And he wrote in the 70s, a lot of kind of existential writings, but we wrote the book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and he wrote another book called illusions. And there’s a quote in the book illusions that I love is that we, we teach best what we most need to learn, we teach. That’s what we most need to learn. And I think high achievers can stand a look in the mirror, look for blind spots, and says there’s something here that by teaching get exactly what Bill said, Can I get better myself at this element? I think that’s a really good thing for them to do I prefer to be opt-in, though. I don’t see it as their responsibility, which is what you’re asking the question. I see it more as their choice. And it’s an absolute Yes.
Bill Caskey 16:17
But you know, what’s interesting about that, and I’ve heard Maxwell talk about this, and I’ve seen it too, is you take somebody who’s at the top of their game, let’s say they’re the number one rapper, the number one achiever. And you ask them, How many times have people come to you in the last year, and sought advice? And you know what, usually the answer is 00. And so is it. Is it up to the high achiever? Yeah. But like Brian said, Come on, if you see a high achiever, take him or her to dinner sometime and just do nothing. But ask questions, record the conversation, and let them know what you’ve tried as a result of that conversation. But for some reason, we’re just afraid to ask for help. And we’re afraid we’re going to be bothering somebody. But again, if you go back to that mindset of No, they’re going to be helping themselves by helping me, then you’re maybe you’re a little bit less tentative, tentative about reaching out. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
James Taylor 17:08
Yes. On that note, I know you both have, I mean, it’s great. You’ve got the podcast, you come together, but you then you have your separate kind of businesses as well. But you both use masterminds for your clients. Can you talk us through, you know, how these work, especially from a sales perspective? And why they’re so powerful?
Bill Caskey 17:25
Brian, go ahead.
Masterminds For Clients
Bryan Neale 17:26
Yeah, sure. So my kind of mastermind, and I kept my word, I use his peer group interchangeable, the same thing, started by me joining one. So when I started working in business, I felt I needed some outside perspective and some help. And I also needed some accountability, I needed a place to go to every month and have peers of mine say, Hey, did you do the things you intended to do this month to progress, your progress toward your goal, and I spent 11 years in a peer group as a member as a paying member of a peer group. And then I step back for a second. And I thought, Man, there needs to be one of these for the functionally focused peer group, like salespeople, or client success people, or VPS of sales, or chief revenue officers, I just couldn’t find anything that was specific, they were all generic. And so I created one, I created multiple peer groups that way. And the three things that I think are great about peer groups. The first is accountability. And we have a mechanism in our peer group that Bill and I run together, where we self-report accountability, we basically say, hey, next month, Maria asked me if I made those five outbound touches to these five clients. And then I asked her in front of all the group, it’s like public shaming, right, but it’s not really public shaming, but it is, and that you do or odds go up that you will do that if you know, you’re going to get asked in front of a group of peers. That’s a one-two, is a very intimate, real-time relevant coaching. And so to James’s question about remote selling, so in our peer groups, that’s been a huge topic, how do I build rapport and find my way into places when I can’t go visit them? I can’t drop in anymore, I can’t see them. How do I do that? How do I do a sales call on zoom, those are all really relevant so we can stay relevant. So it’s not a course like you’re flipping through the book. And we’re teaching the same thing from 1988. And then the third part, which is my favorite, is the community that they come together as a group and get to know each other. There’s comfort in that for salespeople and VPS of sales, and the learning that they get from each other. We even have a group that Bill and I run where their little subgroups have spun out on their own. And that’s so fulfilling to us to see them do that on their own that these little spin-off groups have created. And it’s super valuable for them. So I’m a huge fan. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bill Caskey 19:39
Yeah, I like his three points, and it all up to him two more. And one is that you know, sales, and sales leadership can be lonely. It can be and I don’t think we talked about that enough. And I know in the last year we say well, everybody’s kind of quarantined up and they’re lonely and they’re isolated. And nobody wants to admit if you go up to 1000 people on the street be a busy street. It’s an Are you lonely 99% are going to say no. But the fact is that sales can be a lonely profession, especially today. And so if you give people a chance to connect with other human beings, again, the transformation can be incredible. So I think he’s right on his three. And I just I think we’ve got to have the courage to address what’s really in the room. And that is, sales can be isolated, lonely. It’s a one on one profession, and you just need human beings around you.
James Taylor 20:32
How can you establish one of your masterminds? How do you quickly build, I’ve talked to have a conversation the other day with a friend of mine, Gil Peter cell, who works who’s Tony Robbins business partner in Russia. And Gil is actually also very, very good at masterminds, as he basically focused on Russian entrepreneurs, and especially those in the 30s and 40s. And he but Lowe’s is a mastermind, he’s really great at it. And we had a conversation before about, he called he doesn’t call them, which are oftentimes referred to as coaching pods, there are little mini-groups within masterminds that kind of go and break out, he calls him circles of trust, is the phrase that he uses. I’m wondering like when you bring all these people together? So they all have the same function, they’re all VPS of sales? How do you quickly build a sense of psychological safety and trust within that group? So they feel that they can say, Oh, is it considered to be a lot of bravadoes? Is the ego there? Like, how can you like, get them? So to actually be authentic? and honest? Yeah, – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bill Caskey 21:35
that’s a great question.
Bryan Neale 21:36
Really great question, Brian. Yeah, I’ll tell I’ll start by because I just had a breakthrough. So I have a new group that I started, it’s my first virtual group, we have seven chief revenue officers, VP of sales on there. The first step in that James, in my opinion, is you need to be a good recruiter and a good screener. So these are not open groups. Not everyone’s allowed in, there’s a qualification process. And the qualification process isn’t like some 14 point interview or anything like that. But you have to know trust your gut is the leader of the mastermind who fits and who doesn’t round the table, you need diversity in thought and all of the things and you have to have people that you feel can have a good enough relationship to like to want to be around each other, and not so good that they’re not afraid to push on each other. So that starts with that, then the second part is the leader, the facilitator has got to build that space of trust, and be hyper-aware of where it’s going, and when it’s good. And when it’s bad. And to create a safe space for that. We do that mechanically, just by stating it out loud. But then also, we continue to remind the group what stays in the group is the group’s business, we say that all group businesses group business, those are little mantras. And then at some point, a peer group that comes together, they’ll still stay on the surface one thing that that that, that that, and that at some point, there’ll be this breakthrough, when someone says, I’ve got an observation, Bill, I think I think you’re scared to talk to your boss. And it’s like, and the whole room goes. And that’s it. And it only takes that to happen one time. And the group’s good for the rest of its life. It had I’ve been in peer groups way too long. And I know this is what happens. And it happened for this new group. It was our fourth session, and it happened. And I told them, I’m like, that’s it. Now we’re a group. That’s what I said. And so it’s just an evolution that happens is really great. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bill Caskey 23:17
And I do think that’s a critical part of this, as the moderator has to be hyper diligent about noticing when things can get off track. And if I say something that offends Maria, Maria might be not might not say anything, but as the filter facilitator, you’ve got to say, ooh, that didn’t feel good there. We got to go back to that. You know, James, I appreciate what you said to Maria, can you reframe that? That felt a little like you were attacking her just to me, and then everybody in the group likes, yeah, it’s James really attacked her. And so I think it’s an ongoing thing. Because again, as Brian said, we don’t have we’re not in a lot of groups. A lot of the people who join our groups, I don’t know, Brian, the same way. They’ve never been in a group like this before. And so we’re trying to acclimate them and constantly, you know, be in front of these situations. Remember, you know, it’s safe, it’s a safe group. Anything goes, if somebody is sharing something, please don’t interrupt. I mean, all those kinds of things are just basic stuff. But it’s amazing. You have to keep saying that. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Bryan Neale 24:19
Yes. And call like things. And you know, like to Bill’s point that the facilitators got to notice facial expressions and body language, and say, Maria and I do this. Well, they’ll say something and you’re Maria makes a face. I go, Maria, you just made a face. Tell us what’s going on, you know, and you and then you know, see everything’s outright. We’re just there. It’s a really, really great process really is – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Maria Franzoni 24:41
one of them to these last. Do you decide do people just stay as long as they want you to 11 years, Brian if you have to sign up for 11 years?
Bryan Neale 24:51
Yeah, it was a 12-year contract. I sued the guy got out of it. So paid upfront last year. Exactly. No, these are all for us. They’re their annual commitments. So their annual commitments, we also have a process where we do a check-in each meeting. And part of that check-in, we just call it red, yellow, green. And that means relative to staying in this group, are you green? Are you still good? Are you yellow? Are you starting to think, uh, maybe I’m losing value in the group or something’s happened in my business, I can’t spend the money. And then we talk about that. And if it’s time for them to exit, they exit. And then if someone comes for three meetings, and it’s not their thing, give them all their money back and they don’t. And that’s – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
James Taylor 25:32
it, the traffic lights, that’s a really nice, clean, very being able to flag issues as well. I also what you mentioned about the book, the eye contact piece, and I like doing all that stuff. I was, I was doing an event the other day, it was for law enforcement from different companies, or countries, sorry. And one of the things that he was talking about, which I guess, also got me thinking from a sales perspective, is when you’re in person, you’re a salesperson is picking up all those little cues. It’s just and sometimes it’s just like if someone’s sitting there, you know, the hand of this little thing. And what these law enforcers were saying initially when they had to do, I don’t think they call them interrogations, but it’s the interviews. And if you’re, if you’re in law enforcement in Canada, let’s say, and you have someone that you have to interview in Sydney, what they would do, and they’re in a cell or in a police station in Sydney, initially, it started that the cameras would only be focused on like, Yeah, but the law enforcement officers were saying, we can’t tell what’s going on there. You need to bring the cameras back so we can see more bodies he was kind of going on.
Bryan Neale 26:37
So I got my fingers crossed. Yeah.
Bill Caskey 26:42
Exactly.
We got a stress ball in my hand.
Maria Franzoni 26:49
Questions. I’m sure there’ll be lots of them afterward. And if anybody wants to get in touch with you and ask you more about your masterminds, your coaching, get some sales advice, where should they go?
Bill Caskey 27:01
For me, it’s pretty easy. My name Billcaskey.com. There’s a lot of free resources on that site. And we run live webinars and from time to time and also a lot of information there. So Bill Caskey comm you can connect with me on LinkedIn from that site, that’s probably the best place.
Bryan Neale 27:18
Yeah, and similarly, mine is a little different. It’s blind-zebra.com, like that. Zebra. And yeah, same deal. We have multiple peer groups occurring all the time, we do preview events every six weeks. And on the website, the counter, you can register for those, those are all free, you can come to check it out. And I run those just like a real event. So it’s basically a test drive of the programs. You can see if it’s something for you. – Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
Maria Franzoni 27:48
That’s a great idea preview event every six weeks. And of course, everybody can get in touch with you via the podcast app. Let me see if I get it, right listener, at Advanced selling podcast.com. And I hope they all subscribe in listening because it’s a brilliant podcast.
Bryan Neale 28:01
Thank you very much,
Bill Caskey 28:01
Maria.
Maria Franzoni 28:02
Thank you so much. I know that you go back to your sunshine and your day, sunny in America. Thank you so much.
– Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
James Taylor 28:10
Bye-bye.
I’m James Taylor, keynote speaker, and speaker business coach and this is the SpeakersU podcast. If you enjoy listening to conversations that will help you launch and grow your speaking business fast new thought possible, then you’ve come to the right place. Each week we discuss marketing strategies, sales techniques, as well as ideas to increase the profitability of your speaking business and develop your craft. You’ll find show notes for today’s episode as well as free speaker business training at SpeakersU.com. This week’s episode is sponsored by SpeakersU the online community for international speakers, speakers, you help you launch grow and monetize your speaking business faster than you thought possible. If you want to share your message as a highly paid speaker, then SpeakersU will teach you how just go to speakers, you don’t come to access their free speaker business training. Wow, great value, and it’s gonna be quite excited about masterminds. Now, I must admit, I know Yeah. What is our peer groups is they’re just they’re so powerful if you get that good grouping and you have a really good facilitator like they are. They’re amazing. They’re absolutely amazing. So James,
Maria Franzoni 29:16
introduced the sponsor one thing it did make me think I know that countability that monthly accountability made me think of Weight Watchers,
James Taylor 29:23
we’re gonna have to do a weigh-in.
Maria Franzoni 29:27
So put on a pound so lost three pounds. Anyway, Tai is said thanks for sharing Ty Grady. Sorry, I’ll let you do the the mention of the sponsor. Apologies James.
James Taylor 29:37
Let’s do our way in just now. So let’s take a moment to thank our sponsor today London speaker Bureau. London Speaker Bureau is a global resource for corporations and governments for keynote speakers for executive learning masterclasses and boardroom advisors, representing some of the most influential business leaders and politicians In the world, if you need help in choosing a speaker for your next event, then go to London speaker bureau.com.
LinkedIn Tips
Maria Franzoni 30:08
Fantastic. So yes, a topic you often find to carry on really matters with regards to the sort of, you know, the whole thing about getting leads and getting contacts in generating business. And I’d like us to talk about LinkedIn because I think I personally think LinkedIn is a goldmine. And I’m sure people are sick of me saying that? I do. Do you find that? Do you agree?
James Taylor 30:29
Yeah, it’s, it’s funny because so much so many speakers want to spend time on things like Instagram and Twitter. Now, they’re all great or fantastic. But the one that has the most direct path to the sale, if we’re thinking about that is LinkedIn. So I’d love to know, how do you use LinkedIn? How do you get value from it?
Maria Franzoni 30:50
Oh, goodness, gracious. And so how do I get value from it. So I use it to connect with people and engage with them and start conversations I don’t sell on LinkedIn, I think I don’t like it when people connect with you and sell with you. I also use it not to lose people. Because when people move companies, you’ve lost them. But if you’re connected on LinkedIn, you’re connected. Even if they update their profile, you still have a connection to them. And you can keep in touch. And you and I both use it to share content, I hope we’re adding value. Ty says yes, which is great. He says we’re bringing people together during these times. Thank you, ty. So certainly use it for sharing content, starting conversations engaging with people. But the thing that I like about it is that there are no gatekeepers, you can get to people directly. I remember when I started in this business 23 years ago, you know, there was no LinkedIn. And you had to sort of try and get through gatekeepers to get to people. You can go directly to people, you can have conversations with people, as long as you’ve got a connection, or you’ve got, you know, the premium account. But there are 40 million decision-makers on LinkedIn, most of the five most popular platforms for I can’t even say it a most popular plot. I’m so excited because was a popular platform for Fortune 500 companies is LinkedIn. So why wouldn’t you be there for b2b? It’s phenomenal, I think, yeah.
James Taylor 32:16
And your source is quite a boring platform. So I think if you do stuff that’s interesting, it stands out a little bit easier than if you were putting on Tick Tock or Instagram as well, especially if you’re in video. And I think this is where speakers can really excel and using this because usually, as speakers were a bit more comfortable with video. So I thought, yeah, I mean, I think it’s getting better. Now, maybe I wouldn’t have said that even a year ago. But I think a lot of speakers are becoming more comfortable. The way I often tell people to use it is from inbound and outbound. So you mentioned content, you know, putting out content. That’s, that’s great. That’s fantastic. And the way that I often use it is I will have if I am one of the easiest ways of finding speaking opportunities is just to put together a list of 50 speakers that speak on the same or similar topics to you, and then go and stalk their LinkedIn profiles. Because every speaker loves to share a picture or an image of them on stage or doing something or just vote for such and such. And it’s the easiest thing in the world to find out who their contact is at that company and then reach out Hey, I just noticed that you had x y Zed, I’m a speaker on certain Would you be interested in Bloody Bloody blah. So I use it for we are we use it from research but as you say, I don’t sell on LinkedIn, what we tend to do is we will do our research will pull up lists and create little sub-lists from that. And then from there, we will move things to email, and then ideally to the phone. So we have different tools that we can use, as one of them like hunter.io or clear bit. Because we want to find the email addresses for those people. And we want to start the communication by email initially. And then gradually, if it’s if they you know, they can have raised their hand in some way, then we move it to the phone, I just find I don’t really enjoy. I don’t enjoy being pitched on LinkedIn particularly. And so I wouldn’t want to pitch you know, myself in that way. It just doesn’t feel quite right for me.
Maria Franzoni 34:17
I’m just reading Nick Carson’s point here. He says the magic, the magic, the art of LinkedIn is connecting us or reminding us what it means to be human. As Seth Godin says we love Seth. Art is what we call it when we do when what we do is connect. I think it’s quite I haven’t got that right artist, what we call it when what we do connects us. There you go. Sorry, I made a mess of that, Nick. I’m about to go and get some new glasses.
James Taylor 34:43
But it’s interesting because I feel I don’t know if you feel this. I mean, you must be getting pitched every single day because of your roles.
Maria Franzoni 34:51
A minute I can smell it. I can smell when someone’s connecting with me to pitch I had one today that I haven’t accepted and if you’re out there, you know who you are who simply said to me I’d like to connect so that I can expand my network. Then I’ve looked at your profile and I want to connect or when they come to you say I love your profile, it’s really fantastic. I know they’re going to sell it to me. And if you’re selling Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies, no, not interested.
James Taylor 35:17
It feels a little bit like on those I don’t know. When you the school dances, you know, the 16-year-old boy, that goes up to every girl said, will you dance for me? No. Okay. Well, you asked me to know, when you ask me, it feels like a 16-year-old thing. It’s not really you know, want to be a little bit more sophisticated sales somebody the
Maria Franzoni 35:35
other day and I wish I remember who was and if you’re listening, please claim this because it was so good. I don’t want to steal somebody else’s line. But it was so funny. Somebody said that. They got this pitching session going on, on LinkedIn. And she said I felt like I’d been pitched slapped.
James Taylor 35:51
Oh, that’s a good line. That’s a good,
Maria Franzoni 35:55
that’s good. That’s a good line. It’s a bit near the not call that one. But I just thought you know what, it really is a bit like that, isn’t it?
James Taylor 36:02
But yeah, I’ve also seen it used people, I want to call that some Andrew Edwards was actually a speaker’s EU member as well. But she works with a lot of very big like IBM and different companies to advise their executives on how to use LinkedIn. And I think when done well, with integrity, and a lot of people in larger companies are frightened in case they say something is and break some brand, you know, guide or of some sort. So that there’s, I think it’s a little bit more challenging. If you’re a larger company, you have to be a little bit more careful. But once you kind of got it in, you’re able to express your personality and, you know, use it for business and have outcomes with it, then I think it’s great. It’s a fantastic tool.
Maria Franzoni 36:40
And actually, I made a note that about the integrity point, because that is something that bill and Brian talk about a lot. You know, you need to do to attack all your sales with integrity, and LinkedIn is a tool. And absolutely, you need to approach it with integrity. You’re absolutely right. It’s really important. And it is a tool. It’s a platform. And it’s I don’t want it to be ruined. I don’t want to be ruined with people coming on and abusing it. And I think LinkedIn is actually saying they don’t want to automate automation, they want people to really be on there and use it because a lot of the other platforms have got too much automation. So you’re not even there. You’re not even communicating. It is about that engagement piece, isn’t it? Yeah,
James Taylor 37:19
yeah. And I think if you can switch it up, and talk we talk about video as being about virtual, something I’ll often do is I will do the research and LinkedIn will get the email address. But rather than send an email, I’ll actually just pick up my phone and send a little personal video like using some like a bomb or a bomb zero. And your video just allows you to put more of your personality across than an email that’s not ready for every is going to do it’s got a lot of work, you’re gonna do every single outbound you’re doing. But for some clients, you know, or prospective clients, you know, that they’ve got all the texts next to their name, you know exactly that you could do business with this person. So you may want to go a little bit high, be a bit more creative in your outreach.
Maria Franzoni 38:04
And on a slightly different note, and it did strike me and I didn’t say it. Well, Bill and Brian were on. But it strikes me that bill and Brian are a bit like us. We like them, aren’t we? Aren’t we? Because they each have their own coaching companies specializing in sales. We each have our own coaching training companies that are working with speakers. Yes, you also have your business where you speak. But Brian also speaks, you see. And so I just thought, Gosh, we like the UK version just slightly longer. And that’s it really, isn’t it?
James Taylor 38:32
I think we’re This is Episode 28. I think we’ve got a long way to go until we get to 800 to a
Maria Franzoni 38:38
casket. Oh my goodness. Yes. So Nick, Nick has come I’ve got a photo, I can read this one. Remember the old LinkedIn cold intro text that some coder put in one day and not and not only forgot to change, but for a while wouldn’t let us change either. It was really tricky to edit each time seeing as you’re the person I trust, I’d like to add you to my network. Robotic, cold and presumptuous. The presumptuous thing drives me mad neck. Actually, you’ve got me now, the presumptive thing on LinkedIn or on email where people are telling you what you need? And how brilliant their services when they haven’t even checked that it’s relevant to you at all. Yeah, I get that so much. I get pitched to so much with all sorts of services that actually I don’t need it. If you had bothered to read my profile. If you bothered to check my website, you know, we’ve already got it. We know we’re already there. So that drives me mad or I’m getting old, I’m getting old Italian.
James Taylor 39:33
There’s even a little more subtle, you can do a little bit of a warm up to a bridge. So we’ll sometimes run ad campaigns to people before we ever do in our reach. So we’ll take about a month that we’re an ad campaign so that they’re gonna see my ads in different places might buy banner ads and things before we ever reach out to them. So when you do reach out to them, they go up. Oh, yeah, I recognize his name. The name Yeah. What is that? So you can do the same thing for free on LinkedIn by just going as the thing people’s LinkedIn profiles, and then everyone’s notified, you know, your Joe Bloggs or Maria friendzone has checked out your profile, like who’s Maria? franzoni? Okay. But then you don’t do the immediate Outreach at that stage, you may be put on that list. And then a couple of weeks later, you’ll do the outreach.
Maria Franzoni 40:17
Although you might not want to have your profile visible when you’re stalking your competitors, James that might pay them off. Yeah,
James Taylor 40:24
incognito mode for that one.
Maria Franzoni 40:26
Yeah. Cognito. So Nick, thank you for apologizing for winding me up. So Nick didn’t need to know. It’s absolutely fine. So I think we have to come to an end. We could talk today, probably. So I mean, we’ve shared a lot of tips actually there, haven’t we? Is there one particular tip you want to highlight? Would you say
James Taylor 40:42
the ones I would use that has I just felt a talk about for the guys what we’ve just heard,
Maria Franzoni 40:47
you know, for your LinkedIn, anyone
James Taylor 40:50
the tip you want to share for LinkedIn actually is the most boring one is, you know, get your profile looking good. It’s particularly an interesting one, but just get it looking good. You know, so it’s very quickly you people can understand what you do and what value you offer.
Maria Franzoni 41:03
Yeah, and for me, actually, the one I’d like to share is check out how LinkedIn sees you, and sees your profile and to do that, and this is all lowercase. So go to linkedin.com forward slash sales, forward slash SSI. Let me do that again. linkedin.com, forward slash sales, forward slash SSI. And you’ll get a bit of an overview of what LinkedIn thinks about you and your profile and what you’re doing. It’s rather interesting, right?
James Taylor 41:32
You’re gonna go and I’m gonna check my SSI count just now. Yeah, do that. Listen,
Maria Franzoni 41:37
thank you so much, everybody, we run out of time. And, Nick, I’ll pick up with your last comment with you separately. And that’s it.
James Taylor 41:47
We’re off-row. Thanks, everyone. Have a great week. You can subscribe to the SpeakersU podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts while you’re there. leave us a review. I really appreciate it. I’m James Taylor, and you’ve been listening to the SpeakersU podcast.
– Advanced Selling For Speaking Business
