Episode 14: 21 Tenets of Social Selling - The Philosophy for Relationship Bankers

Jack Hubbard  00:01

I've had the privilege of being in and around banking for more than 50 years. Lots of changes during that time. We've gone from Ledger's to laptops, typewriters to technology. One thing, however, remains the same. Banking is a people business. And I'll be talking with those people that make banking great here on Jack Rants With Modern Bankers. 

Good afternoon, everybody. This is Jack Hubbard. Hi Brynne!

Brynne Tillman  00:36

Hi Jack! I love our new hats.

Jack Hubbard  00:38

Our hats came from vertical IQ and they are fabulous and wonderful. And you know, Brynne. It's just been a great week as people can see I'm not in the world headquarters today. In my basement, I'm actually traveling and I'll tell you a little bit more about that. But this has been an unbelievable week. I've had a great Father's Day Program, a barbecue with my daughter and son in law in Geneva on Sunday. Monday, I did a podcast with Byron Everhart and Barrett School of Banking. Yesterday, I was back in the classroom in Syracuse, Illinois with a sold out group from the independent bankers of New York State. Today I get to work with you. And Brynne, tomorrow,  I'm going to the Baseball Hall of Fame with my son, what could be better?

Brynne Tillman  01:27

I know it's so fun. And it was Syracuse, New York. Yes. So yeah, it was awesome. I love it. I love that all of your students are crazy engaged on LinkedIn, on your posts. They had such an incredible time. I'm a little jealous that I wasn't there but I'm so glad it was such a huge success.

Jack Hubbard  01:51

It was and Big shout out to John Witkowski and his team for having me here in Syracuse, New York. And so I'm excited but today, we have lots to do. 21 tenants of LinkedIn. And so let's get started with number one Brynne. We talk a lot about social selling, being that of a building rapport process, building value, and being a resource. Talk more about that.

Brynne Tillman  02:20

Yes, this is huge, right? Like when people hear LinkedIn and social selling, unfortunately, the first thing they think is “Oh, connect and pitch all that spammy, spammy.” That's not social selling, that social spam. It's not even social to antisocial spam, right? But social selling really, you know, and it really is about showing up in a way that's meaningful to your audience, right? It's about really being a value. So I love that we start with this definition, ultimately, the end that we're creating credibility, being a resource. I love that great place to start. And I know I'm talking a lot, and this is meant to be a rapid fire. So we'll kick through some of these but one of us may read through one of them because we did. 

Jack Hubbard  03:23

That's all right. And here's the second one. I say social listening, and you say… 

Brynne Tillman  03:29

Maybe the best way to understand your buyers and your buyers' customers prior to reaching out. One of the things that most salespeople do wrong is they wait for the discovery conversation, to find out the discovery, the answers that you want in discovery. If you can get a bunch of these prior to showing up first of all, your discovery is I noticed this, how is that affecting you? is so much better than tell me what's keeping you up at night? So you know, that social listening piece that both of us cannot emphasize enough makes all the difference.

Jack Hubbard  04:12

And I'll tell you a number three, and it lands right in your life because when I met you first on LinkedIn, one of the things that really stuck out at me was the level of subject matter expertise you have on LinkedIn, we need to do that Brynne to be a resource for our buyers.

Brynne Tillman  04:29

I think that that's really important. And I think that it’s our number three if I remember it correctly. Yeah, our goal is to share our insights. Our goal is to show up as a resource for buyers. That's how we earn the right for them to even care about talking to us. So when we can do that, we become the person they come to for guidance. 

Jack Hubbard  04:57

It’s true. And number four, it goes right along along with that Brynne, because speaking of resource, your profile really starts out by showing people that you are a resource and that your profile is not a resume.

Brynne Tillman  05:10

Ohh, I cannot emphasize this enough. Shift that profile from a resume to a resource. And the reason is, social selling is about being a resource. So if you look for a job, they don't care about your mission, your passion, your years in business yet, they will once they care about you, but the way that they care about you is when you bring them value. So I love it. 

Jack Hubbard  05:36

That's right. And yesterday when I talked to the bankers here, and I didn't want to embarrass anybody, but most of them had something like vice president commercial bank or something like that and then put the name of their bank in their headline, which is wasted real estate, they need to tell people how they can help. And that's where this all starts above the fold but let's get to number five, too, because too often what happens is, we spend time telling our people, our buyers, how we can help, why don't we just do it?

Brynne Tillman  06:07

How great would that be? So yeah, right, we show up. We help. You know, we help companies like you get the capital, they need to do whatever they need to do. You know, we help companies like you with their treasury services, we help, we help. It's about us. It's not about them. Now, yes, they need to know this but let's reframe it just a little bit. And this is where we move from telling them how we can help to simply helping. So maybe what is in our content, in our profile, we're talking about, The five reasons you should if you're a credit union, I'm just saying if you're a credit union, five reasons, small businesses should use credit unions for their treasury services. We're educating versus saying we do this, we do this, we do this, like, Oh, I've never really used a credit union before. That's interesting. Flip it if you're a banker, right? Whatever that is, but reframe. I do this, we do this too. This is what you should expect. This is what every business owner needs and that's how we lead them to our solution.

Jack Hubbard  07:27

no doubt. And number six goes right along with that. It says social selling content should resonate with the buyer, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  07:37

Yeah. Now this is a big deal. So there's there's five elements. It's interesting. I was just chatting on LinkedIn with my friend, Yvonne Ribeiro, about these five things literally, like five minutes before we got on and the first one is, you need to resonate with the buyer. When your buyer gets to your content when they're scrolling, they need to know it's for them. So if you are a banker that handles small businesses in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then you need to say small businesses in Tulsa, Oklahoma are challenged with.They go “Oh, that's me.” . That's the resonate  piece. 

The create curiosity piece is number two. It's got to be something that they care about.So the creating curiosity is, you know, the number one challenge they have in Bridge loans for their, you know, for their large orders. Okay, whatever that is, right. Now they go, “Oh, you know, I have cash flow issues. And I do have a lot of big orders.” I'm going to keep reading.

The next piece would be teach them something new. So you could talk about by having a line of credit in place whenever you get a large order, you don't have to juggle all your other orders in order to get them all done. You'll always have that line of credit to pull from, I'm just saying these are like little tips, you know, in the thought, so they go, “Boy, I don't have a line of credit right now. That would be great.”  And so now they go if your banker has not yet talked to you about this, right, then we could go into creating the compelling moment. Well, we have to get you know, they're now thinking differently because they don't have that line of credit. And then the compelling moment, something if your banker hasn't offered you this, let's chat. I'm happy to provide insights that can let you know if the line of credit is right for you. 

Or you know, and then they go “ooh, that's a compelling moment” or what is the number one – that's one call to action compelling moment. Another one could be you know, Like this post, if  you're looking for a line of credit, I don't know, fun things, lots of things, but we have to create a compelling moment, because we need to move them from Lurker to engage. And the only way we're going to do that is by creating curiosity, resonate and creating curiosity, teaching them something new that gets them thinking differently about the current banking situation. 

Jack Hubbard  10:27

Let’s talk about number seven. I did an interesting thing yesterday. And number seven, by the way, share content that your buyers want to consume. So I did a little exercise with folks. So late in the day, we had a lot of trust with each other. So it was a lot of fun. And I said, So tell me something a manufacturing company in Syracuse might be wanting to know about or might be dealing with. And when someone yelled out about robotics, I said, Okay, tell you what, let's write a post right now, on issues around robotics in Syracuse, New York, for a manufacturing company said, well, we don't have time to do that. I set up, let's go to chatGPT. So I went to chatGPT. I typed it in, we have a three paragraph piece of great information that I sent to the bankers. Now you have to edit, you gotta make it yours. You have to make sure that it's tailored and it's done right but they saw now that this was content that a buyer would want to consume, not something that a banker would want to send, that is a subtlety, but it's a very important difference.

Brynne Tillman  11:34

It is because it's no longer –when we send them content that we want them to know about. It's not about them. It's about us. The goal here is to send them content that will be meaningful to them. So Jack, brilliant, I love it.

Jack Hubbard  11:50

I'm really looking forward to hearing your answer on number eight, engage 10 times more than you post. Talk about that. And let's make sure that we have a distinction between comments and liking when we're talking about engagement, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  12:09

I love that. Okay, so I will say this started with Richard van der Blom’s report on the algorithm, right? And how engaging before and after you post gets your post out to more people. So I'm thinking like, we've got to measure this, like how many and when and I recognize that 10 to one was a great ratio for me, I started watching the engagement, when we engage on other people's content more than we're sharing content. Number one, they care about that more, if they're sharing content, and we engage, we matter more to them than the content we share, number one. Number two, when you engage that much more, LinkedIn says your content is going to now be shown to folks, right, your content is worthy because you're playing the game. It's not a one way street, you're engaging. 

Now, the way you engage matters, and this is I think was your question. I'm going to call them algorithm points. There are no real points. But it's the way that I can visually make this work. If you comment first, before you react, you get the most algorithm points, credit, whatever that is. So it's a comment, like, reshare, repost, share to the inbox of someone and I think I might be missing one. But the bottom line is the two most important things to do is comment first, and then react, you can repost it, put your own two cents behind it, when you do that. You can share it in the inbox of folks. The bottom line, though, is 10 to one ratio, do not share another piece of content until you've engaged 10 times and a comment is one engagement, a reaction is one engage.

Jack Hubbard  14:21

And when you're talking about that it could be different posts and the way I look at it is and this is how I remember it. Lazy likes lackluster. And when I think about that, I don't just like something I really do want to comment and one great way to comment is to ask a question. I found this to be very interesting. I've seen this also what are your thoughts? And now you're going to get some reengagement. Well the next one number nine has to do with you not having to be the smartest person in the room because you become a genius through your clients when you do q&a Brynne, that's number nine.

Brynne Tillman  15:05

Ahh, I love this one, capture your genius. There are a few ways you could do this. I literally have a notebook with me when I'm taking physical notes. I'm also recording almost everything in. So I'm getting transcripts but if I get a question that I know I have this great answer to and I answer I'm gonna remember that question. I'm gonna go back to that. So many bankers are like, well, you know, I'm not a writer, I'm not a set, you know, I'm not, I don't even have time to write. But in today's world, capturing the great questions that your prospects and clients are asking you and your genius answers that get them excited to work with you, is easier than ever before. So either take notes, or record the conversation on Zoom and sometimes I just jump on a quick zoom after my meeting, and record myself saying that question and the answer one more time, when we share direct q&a. Client asked me, here was the situation, here were some of the things that we were doing. What are things that you might do in that situation? Now you're getting engaged and you want to say, you know, my client calm a small business owner in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the oil and business, right, that you're you, that's where you're resonating, you know, have this challenge. Now you're creating curiosity, right? And it all comes together. But it's based on your client's question, your answer. And, ultimately, it doesn't even have to always have an outcome, you can update that later but it could be you know, here was my recommendation, what would you recommend? Or what would you want your banker to do for you, or, and you can get that that engagement.

Jack Hubbard  17:02

It's a mini case study. And when you start to do that, and this is the point of content too. It doesn't have to be long form content, it can be very, very short, but very, very powerful. Your banker, you may make three calls today on three different industries. But something similar might have happened. Post that I call them three to these kinds of industries today. And I found this to be something in common with all three. What are your thoughts? What are your clients seeing? And now you're getting great engagement. And that's terrific. All right, we're almost halfway through number 10. This is, I think, one of your favorites. Connect and pitch is a bait and switch. 

Brynne Tillman  17:52

So interesting is it's one of my favorites, I will reframe them and say it is my least favorite thing that is done. It is one of my favorite things to talk about. So connect and pitch is a bait and switch. We've all been victims of this right and someone connects with us and we immediately get pitched. Interestingly, I think people are even pitching before they connect. Now they're so desperate, that is not going to get us meaningful trust based conversations.What will be is that we're showing up as a resource. So please, if you are cold calling at all on LinkedIn, stop and use this, like, there's a real human being on the other side of the message because guess what? There is., there's a person there. And we want to treat them well.

Jack Hubbard  18:37

Absolutely. And what's really cool as I'm seeing people download through the QR code put together. One of the things that they're doing is doing outreach, which kind of leads to number 11. Slow down your outreach to speed up your outcome.

Brynne Tillman  18:55

This is such an important one and I think this goes back. Actually I'm good order because the connecting pitch is a bait and switch leads into, slow it down, learn about your prospect, learn about your prospects' clients, learn about what matters to them, and learn about who they follow, what content they are sharing, you're so much that we can do that. Now when we do our outreach. No question at all. They are getting value and they recognize we've invested time and getting to know them. So I love that. You mention the QR code for our listeners that are not visually seeing our program today? Go to themodernbanker.com/21tenets. 

Jack Hubbard  19:56

Number 12 Brynne is earn the right to get the call. And I love this one, because what I hear from a lot of bankers is “Well, I haven't made any sales on LinkedIn.” Well yet don't make any sales on LinkedIn. This is a human thing. LinkedIn is a tool just like anything else, like a vertical IQ, like a RelPro. But using LinkedIn and the other tools helps you earn the right to have a conversation.

Brynne Tillman  20:24

Absolutely. I think that's so important. And that's the being that resource, showing up in a way that allows you to just really understand that they're not here to buy. They're here to network and engage. So Janice, hi, Janice, fantastic ideas here today, Jack and Brynne. Yay, thanks for joining us.

Jack Hubbard  20:51

Really appreciate it. And so let's go to the number, Lucky 13. I care more about the outcome than the sale. And when we talk about the outcome, it could be the outcome for the potential buyer who benefits from what you're doing on LinkedIn. Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  21:05

Yeah, and you know, it as we're, you know, we hear people say, I want to use LinkedIn for lead gen. And unlike Yeah, it's, I don't like that. I mean, we talked about leads and prospects. But the idea of lead gen to me is throwing a whole lot out there and hoping and praying someone reacts. But that happens when we're really attached to the sale, right? It's about what we want. We've got to shift our thinking. And I know there's some overlap and a lot of what we're talking about today but it's important to really get that we need to focus on the value that the reader that the consumer of our content gets, then at the end of reading this, they're not like, “Oh, I want to switch banks today.” But oh, this banker was really valuable. Now, we will get them eventually to switch when the time is right. And very few people are ever going to switch a bank because they read a good article, right? That they may take a new banker's call and then get nurtured over time, but it's really important that it's just not about your business, it's about their success.

Jack Hubbard  22:21

That's exactly right. And that leads us into number 14, I was telling folks yesterday that I have a belief, and it's so true, it's not an easy one, captain obvious that you may not get the sale on the first call, in fact, is a banker, if you do, there's might be a challenge there but you may lose the sale on the first call. So what you need to do a number 19 detach from what the prospect is worth to you, and attach what you are worth to the prospect to be valuable. Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  22:56

You know, this is one we talk about constantly, we really do. And, you know, it's when you can get this is part of your complete sales philosophy. You will win, right? When you watch rather than saying, “Ooh, small business owner accepted my connection. Now I'll have my numbers.” II'll be able to let you know I'm this this prospect based on his LinkedIn profile is worth this much in business. When we start to do that. We miss the point. We are bankers for the purpose of helping individuals, families and businesses succeed in return, we make money. We need to think of it in that order.

Jack Hubbard  23:56

Absolutely. And speaking of order number 15 is after 14. So let's talk number 15. I like this one a lot. Treat the prospect on the other side of the message the same way you would on the other side of the desk.

Brynne Tillman  24:12

Yes, I love this one too. And I should choose. I think I always say table, I like desk better. We're gonna change that, that's perfect. Yes, absolutely. If you were sitting in front of a prospect, they invite you in and you're, you know, I guess I had the conference room table, but I love the idea of sitting across from their desk. How would you talk with that? Would you immediately jump into “Hey, thanks so much for having me and let me tell you how our bank can help you.” You would never do that if you get kicked out. So yeah, Jack, this one is really really important. These are human beings on the other side of this message they are they're the same people that when you do it right you will be on the other side of the desk with.

Jack Hubbard  24:59

Absolutely, and number 16, don't ask a –This is just so good. I talked yesterday about the four buckets of planning. LinkedIn gives you such a great opportunity to know about stuff. Don't ask the prospect, something that you could find out on LinkedIn before you make the call.

Brynne Tillman  25:18

Yeah, this is really a big deal. And I have to tell you, there are times where it is not my prospect, but when someone books a call with me to sell to me, and the first thing they say is “Oh, so we're in the country, are you?” I'm like, Huh, you could have found that on my profile. Or they'll say, you know, tell me a little bit more about your company. Why don't you start with “Hey, I noticed you're in the greater New York area. I have a cousin in Connecticut. Is that where you are? Oh, no, New Jersey? Yeah. Oh, I hear the beaches are great.” Okay. Big difference in that conversation. You know, when you ask that? 

The next question tell me about your business Hey, I was checking out your profile and your website and I learned a couple of things around X Y& Z Can you tell me a little more about that, they realize now that you, so I would realize they took the time to look at, and I'm worth the time to invest three minutes before they get on a call. So when someone says that, to me, what I say is here, do me a favor. We’re gonna end the call now, go do your research on my LinkedIn profile, and you're welcome to schedule another call with me, and I hang up. Some do, and some don't. 

But I don't want to waste my time telling them things they could have learned on my profile. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's respect. And you feel like you were worth their time. So when you are the banker reaching out, look for shared connections, look at where they're located, look at who they follow. I mean, that's the social listening part, that can transform how quickly you build rapport, we have a lot of connections. However, we are out prospecting all the time, yet, often we are ignoring the hundreds, if not 1000s, of connections that we already have. 

So search your connections with the first degree filter, which by the way you can do in the free LinkedIn, or export your connections into an Excel spreadsheet, and take a look at who you're already connected to, that you want to have a conversation with. We often call this conduct CPR to your connection. So yes, we're breathing life back into them but we're identifying clients, prospects and referral parts perfectly.

Jack Hubbard  27:55

And I just did this yesterday. And it's so interesting how, and it's so easy to do. And I did it live with a group yesterday. And they were just fascinated by that. And when I said, I don't know, we had 20 or 30 bankers, and they said, How many of you have ever done this? And none of them ever had, this is such a valuable thing to do. Let's go to 18. When you ask their perspective, you matter to them.

Brynne Tillman  28:20

If someone sends me a poll that I have an answer to I vote, if someone else my perspective on content, they wrote, not only am I excited that they care about what I think, but I spend so much time crafting a good message that often leads to other content, I'm capturing my genius, right in that. But when I come from when I'm asked for my perspective, they matter more, I can't help it. We're all a little ego driven. It just is. So as a banker, if you go out and say, “Hey, I'm talking to small businesses in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I'm asking them, What are the three things you're doing to prepare for, you know, a shift in the economy? What are five things that you're doing today?” And you just have conversations with them. You can even ask them for a zoom call or meet a team's call, right? Where you come in and record it and use it as content  but at the end of the day, when you're asking them, what matters to them, you matter what? No, I'm gonna rephrase that. When you ask them, their perspective will just Yes, you really matter to them. So I love that.

Jack Hubbard  29:33

You talked about Tulsa, Oklahoma. We recently in a live coaching session that we did for our bankers, one of the bankers was going overseas to Europe, and we were casually kind of talking about what were you going? And he said, Well, I'm going here, I'm going here and going here and you said, Well, let's take advantage of some of our social proximity to be able to see if there are other people that you might want to meet with which by the way he has done And that's really helping him. So number 19 has to do with social proximity. Talk more about that.

Brynne Tillman  30:07

Yeah, and what's really kind of fun on LinkedIn, the free or Sales Navigator, you can drill down to people in a small is any zip code now in the free, it's the name of the town. But let's say, I don't know any of the towns in Tulsa, but you're coming to West Orange, New Jersey, and you're going to visit with me. And you're like, Okay, so I want to see who do I know in Montclair and Livingston in Short Hills in Summit all my surrounding towns, because you're gonna say, “Hey, I'm going to be visiting, I'm out visiting with Social Sales Link, like I'm with The Modern Banker with Brynne Tillman  you know, next week, and I'd love to drop by and just introduce myself, right. So, and now, I mean, that's also like time and territory management, but you can search your first degree LinkedIn connections, and do that.

Jack Hubbard  31:00

2  more. Number 20 is to socially surround prospective accounts and bring value to each stakeholder in a way that matters to them in their role.

Brynne Tillman  31:12

I love this one, right. So when you're working with a small business, you have the CEO, what matters to them, you have the CFO, what matters to them, you might have maybe there are retail locations, and each of the managers of those retail locations, need cash picked up every day, right, they all have different needs and when you know, if you go in with the same stick every single with every single role, you're not going to resonate with them. So you know, you really want to make sure you know all the roles inside of the company and ultimately, that you are leveraging the insights you know about what each of them care about.

Jack Hubbard  31:56

And I want to talk directly to our treasury management folks, in this regard, a CFO is likely going to be the purchaser or the end buyer, if you will of treasury management services and that's great but here's what we need to think about and this is true in live calls as well. That person that plugs in the data needs to understand what the dashboard looks like, needs to understand how to input the data, that it's easy to use, and they need a lot of education. My point is this. You've got end users and companies that are using treasury management services, that content that you send to them is going to be different than the content that you do for a CFO.

CFOs need to know maybe five things that manufacturing companies CFOs are using from a treasury management perspective. And the end user needs five easy ways to use treasury management. From a technical perspective. That is what we're talking about here that allows you to customize one of the five C's of trust based selling, and it's so powerful. Well, this time has gone by very quickly. But we have one left and it's one of my favorites. And it's a pet peeve of mine, it has to do with random acts of social. Talk about random acts of social.

Brynne Tillman  33:17

ah, this is so important people come on, they like, they comment, they look through their newsfeed, maybe they look through their inbox or their notifications, maybe they ask someone to connect, and maybe they accept a connection request, and then they leave. And then they say, Boy, LinkedIn just really doesn't do anything for my business. And it's because they just don't have a plan. So like our friend, the International banker, using LinkedIn to socially surround himself with, you know, the ideal people that he wants to talk to when he is in a location really makes that travel that much more productive. There was a plan behind that. 

Maybe you have a plan that before you talk with any customer, you make sure you're connected with them on LinkedIn, and you search their connections and build a list of people they know that you might want to meet and run the names by them potentially getting some referrals. That is I have a plan and a purpose and that's where social selling becomes successful. And you know, as a modern banker, our goal is to make sure that we overcome the random acts of social and we create purposeful, LinkedIn prospecting, that converts to trust based conversations without being salesy.

Jack Hubbard  34:43

No question and I saw a post recently by Mark Cuban. And he talked about the number one thing that successful business owners do and that's effort. And so with LinkedIn, you have to be consistent and you have to do the work. LinkedIn is not the sales process, but it is part of the sales process. And it's a very important part.

Brynne Tillman  35:06

Yeah. And you know, generally we look at this as this is the very top of the funnel. Now we have to truly build rapport and relationships and have a lot of fun.

Jack Hubbard  35:18

And we packed a lot of effort into 38 or 39 minutes, Brynne, it was really exciting. Glad to see you this week. And we will be back next week, Thursday because if it's Thursday, it's Jack Rants With Brynne. See you next week, Brynne.

Thanks for joining us for Jack Rants with Brynne brought to you by our good friends at Vertical IQ and RelPro. We're live on LinkedIn every Thursday at noon Eastern time helping bankers turn connections into conversations. 

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