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About This Episode
Activity doesn’t equal results.
Influence does.
Decision-makers (AKA people) don’t buy from companies. Also, they don’t buy from sales departments. People buy from people.
Surveys show that buyers are interested in buying from subject-matter experts, not from sales teams. It’s time to rethink how we go about building our funnel.
This, according to Jake Dunlap, CEO of Skaled. He helps teams scale their sales organizations and processes during the turbulence of high growth.
We’d say he’s doing well, but his track record, and Forbes and Huffington Post, and his previous positions at Nowait (sold to Yelp), Chartbeat (3,000% annual booking growth) show that he’s not just doing well — Jake is doing phenomenally well.
He hopped on the Sales Engagement podcast to share some of his sales wizardry.
The Old Sales Metrics Don’t Work
First, Jake took aim at some myths.
Most of us have read this old material, and we’re still playing by these rules: X Activity + SQLs = X Results. We plug in some numbers, and we go to work.
But this doesn’t measure influence.
People now buy from subject-matter experts who influence them. We have to think differently, act differently, and use different KPIs.
At first, Jake and his team made ebooks, beautiful e-books with great content. No engagement. Now he’s playing by new rules, which are bringing 10x, and sometimes 100x, to his clients.
Your LinkedIn Profile Needs to Reflect You Are a Painkiller
LinkedIn is where the B2B sales world congregates. 40 percent of users are daily users. What salespeople and teams don’t understand is how to leverage LinkedIn.
It starts with sales leaders. Traditionally, LinkedIn was a recruitment website, and their profiles still reflect that.
Change your profile. Stop bragging that you created an award-winning global sales team. The Director of IoT you are trying to sell to doesn’t care. They want expertise. They want to look at your profile and think: This person can kill my pain points.
Proceed with value. You need to frame yourself as the person with more industry experience and expertise than anyone else. Then, continue with more value. If an industry leader follows your content and/or engages with you because of your expertise, guess who else is right behind them? Other key leaders.
You’ve now not only garnered legitimacy within your funnel, but you’ve also expanded your entire funnel to capture their network. Time your sales antics wisely from there.
That’s the power of LinkedIn.
5 Pro LinkedIn Hacks
1. If you like cats, post about cats
People aren’t buying from your org. They’re buying from you, an individual. So if your personal region is IT in the Pacific Northwest, reshare about IT happenings in Seattle. If you enjoy cats, doggone it, post about cats.
2. Marketing: Let go of the reins.
For salespeople to be free to post as individuals, marketing has to let go of the reins. You can’t control all the content. Trust sales to do their job. You can control the branding of the individual’s personal LinkedIn page (i.e., company logo and tagline), but let individuals show that picture with their tattoo.
3. Don’t spew company propaganda.
Do you really think anyone who’s potentially buying from you cares that your company was voted best place to work? Probably not. They want information on their pain points. Provide it.
4. Use your prospects as street cred.
You’re in sales. You talk to people all day long. If you talk to the SVP of Sales at Macy’s, ask her if you can jot down a few notes from your call and share them. She’ll say yes because she’s getting free press. Guess what? The SVP of Sales at H&M is now looking at your profile.
5. LinkedIn is working today. It (probably) won’t work tomorrow.
Why does Jake care so much about LinkedIn? No reason except that it’s working today. Channels cycle. Ideas get tired. Once LinkedIn gets saturated, the energy may shift to direct mail, phone calls, something that hasn’t been invented yet.
Lastly, Jake’s not just saying this stuff. He’s walking the walk. His company specializes in go-to-market, sales, process and account growth, and they help category leaders maintain their leadership as they scale.
Yet, Jake is also majorly increasing their content and technical side. They’re building on the understanding that the future of sales is technology-driven.
This post is based on a podcast interview with Jake Dunlap from Skaled. To hear this episode, and many more like it, you can subscribe to The Sales Engagement Podcast.
If you don’t use iTunes, you can listen to every episode here.
About The Podcast
The Sales Engagement podcast is the #1 podcast focused on engaging your customers and prospects in the modern sales era. This show features real-life stories and best practices from revenue leaders doing the job day in and day out, in a casual, radio-like talk show.
Each episode features modern tactics, strategies, hacks, and tips to get the most out of your sales engagement strategy and help you navigate the next generation of sales. You’ll find energetic talks that will provide you with real actionable value around building meaningful connections and creating a better selling experience through authentic conversations that you can measure.
The Sales Engagement podcast is here to help B2B sales leaders, customer success leaders, and marketing leaders innovate and usher in the next era of modern sales by building pipeline, up-selling customers, and ultimately generating more revenue with more efficiency.
Hosted by Joe Vignolo, Senior Content Managing Editor at Outreach, and Mark Kosoglow, Vice President of Sales at Outreach.
