Buyer-Centric Strategies for B2B Sales Success with Steve Watt (Seismic)

TRANSCRIPT

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] And welcome everybody to the Good for Business Show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and today is one of my favourite topics. We're gonna talking about how to sell on LinkedIn, and I've bought one of my favourite people to learn from. Steve Watt, welcome to the show.

Steve Watt: Michelle. Thanks so much for having me on.

I'm excited that we're upgrading our relationship from LinkedIn friends to LinkedIn live friends, podcast friends, and maybe one day we'll meet in person.

Michelle J Raymond: Exactly, and I want everybody to go to your profile, find the bell that's underneath the banner in the top right hand corner. Click on that bell to get notified of your posts because every single one is jam packed full of social selling tips the new way, so we're not gonna be talking about, I think this may have been called how not to sell on LinkedIn might be a better term.

Steve Watt: It's half of it, isn't it? Yeah.

Michelle J Raymond: Exactly. So for those who haven't come across you, who are you, what do you do and who do you help?

Steve Watt: Sure. I am all about social selling and social reputation building. Social [00:01:00] relationship building. I work for Seismic, which I'm sure many of your listeners and viewers know. Seismic is the world's largest sales enablement platform. And two years ago, I guess it was now Seismic acquired a company called Great Fine Six, where I was leading the marketing team and we were a enterprise social selling and social advocacy tool. Seismic recognised that was a big gap and that that professional, modern professional selling needs to include social. And as the enablement leader, Seismic needed to fill that gap. So they acquired our company. It became Seismic Live Social and now I get to keep doing all the same things, but I wear a different t-shirt now.

Michelle J Raymond: I love it. So before we jump into all things social selling, how do you define it, Steve?

Steve Watt: I wanna differentiate it from selling on social, which it's not, I wanna differentiate it from the old school social selling that I think carries a lot of baggage with a lot of people. The idea of blasting connection requests, trying to [00:02:00] pitch, slap everyone, just trying to barge your way into the worlds, into the lives of people. And then when it doesn't work, surprise, because it doesn't work like that anymore. Nobody wants that. Then you throw up your hands and say social selling is over, or LinkedIn's over. And I think no, you're just doing it wrong.

You're doing it with a 2010 or a 2012 mindset and approach and it doesn't work anymore. It takes something entirely different. It takes a different mindset now, a different skill set perhaps a different tool set, and definitely a different approach.

Michelle J Raymond: Look, and I get pitched by automated sales pitchers all the time, and I've had some conversations with some of these people going, you know what, if you change up a few things, maybe this will work better and they literally just say, out of every 800 automated message that goes out, maybe one or two, they might get to do it. And I'm like, but you're gonna burn 780 relationships. Like what is going on here? And we were speaking just before the show about the KPIs that are driving this bad [00:03:00] behaviour. What have you seen out there?

Where do you think that lets down people that are, tasked with the job of social selling?

Steve Watt: It very often goes right there, right? I strongly believe everything starts with mindsets about what you are doing and why, but then a very quick thing you get into, Okay, how do I measure it?

And if you're measuring connection requests sent, if you're measuring InMails sent, if you're measuring short term transactional outcomes how many meetings did you walk this week? Then you are forcing your people into a old and very unproductive, and as you said, relationship destroying approach.

So I mean, that's not the way to do it. What you're really ought to be doing here is helping your people, enabling and empowering your people to build their reputation, to build relationships, to build trust, to spark business building conversations. These things are not transactional. They don't happen overnight, and sometimes they're hard to measure, but [00:04:00] they're incredibly important. And if you give people the space to breathe, if you give them the empowerment and the enablement to actually build reputation and relationships and trust and involve themselves in conversations and all sorts of great things start to pay off in terms of pipeline and revenue and, acquisition of new partners and all sorts of things.

But it's not something that's gonna happen, tomorrow based on your activities today and I think it's that short term transactional mindset that's at the root of so many problems.

Michelle J Raymond: I, as a sales professional, came across that and headbutted against it so many times in my career because I discovered social selling around eight years ago. I had no idea that's what I was doing. In my mind, all I was doing was I'd been given a customer list about 80 customers, in a new industry. So I didn't have any background or relationships that I'd built, and they were spread around [00:05:00] Australia, not a small country, Sydney, where I live, lots of traffic. It was just a physical impossibility to reach everybody at the same time in a way that I could nurture those relationships.

And so I started using LinkedIn and I remember going to my boss and saying, Can I post some content on this LinkedIn thing? And he was like, is it free? And I was like, Yes. And he's like, Just go. And that was the end of it. No one ever spoke to me about it. No one cared. They were just like, That's nice for you and my numbers were going crazy. And I had the lineups when we went to, events face to face. I would have a lineup and they couldn't understand why I had that. And everybody else was like that whole shark and fish scenario where, Everybody walks past a stand from three metres away to see what kind of, is there a mint that I wanna steal?

Is that my reason for going over? Whereas I had people genuinely, coming with inquiries. So you had a couple of different ways that I love that you look around social selling, and one of them is buyer centric social selling. Can you talk a little bit about that? [00:06:00]

Steve Watt: I'm trying to make that name stick as a, not just a name, but as a mindset and an approach that is fundamentally differentiated from the past and from those selfish behaviors and I believe that all the stuff we've been talking about, that hunting mentality, that the pitch slapping, the hundred connection requests and it's a numbers game and that is fundamentally seller centric. It's all about me. I don't care about you, right? If we flip things around and we say, How can I become the seller that buyers actually want to speak with, instead of trying to force a conversation, how can I flip it around and become a magnet, become the one they actually want to speak with. Like you were saying, you did, that activity that you were doing all those years ago. Then when people walked into that room and they saw your face and Oh my God, it's Michelle.

It's so great to meet you. They were drawn towards you. You became someone they wanted to speak with as opposed to everyone else. They were just kind of like, Oh, don't make eye contact. And [00:07:00] that because you were approaching it in an audience centric, or a client centric or a buyer centric way. For me, it's all about really showing up and speaking up on social platforms, be it LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, wherever your audience is. For me it's LinkedIn and with an honest intent to educate, inspire, and help others. Not just pushing promotional materials, not just hunting, not just making it all about me or my company or my products but actually an honest intent.

To educate, inspire, help others build relationships. And when you actually do that, and I keep emphasizing an honest intent because people try to fake it all the time. If you show up with that honest intent consistently, it changes everything. And that to me is at the root of what buyer-centric social selling is.

And we can, we could talk for hours about what that means in terms of content strategy and engagement strategy and [00:08:00] all sorts of other things. But again, it starts in a mindset of actually being educational and helpful instead of just trying to turn everything into a sales conversation immediately.

Michelle J Raymond: So when it talks about faking it, this is my classic example that I would use. So everybody knows you shouldn't pitch slap. And what we mean by that is you do a connection request and the very next message is, Hey, buy my stuff. Let's have a meeting. And that's a pitch slap. So what I find is people then went, I'll send one message to connect, the second message, which is a fake, Oh, I saw this on your profile let's pretend that I'm interested. And then the third message is the slap, and that is the fakeness that happens and people smell it from a mile away. They know what you're up to. I think there's been a power shift over the 20 years that I've been doing sales based roles.

Is that the buyer is they're awake to all of this. They already know the tricks. They've got all the information in their hands and trying to out wit them, outsmart them, [00:09:00] outplay them, really doesn't work. And I think that's what people don't understand. They think they're better than the buyer that they're trying to get, and they're smarter, and that's where things come undone.

So with these traditional sales models that we've got versus buyer centric, what are the major differences that happen there?

Steve Watt: Yeah, I'm all the way with what you're saying about don't try to fake it. People will know . Another example just quickly on that, where clearly someone's out there training people that you should engage five times with someone's content before you reach out to them? I once had an SDR who clicked like on five of my posts in five seconds, and then sent me a connection request, like literally five seconds. I saw the notifications come in like connection request.

Michelle J Raymond: Or the fake endorsements. We'll add those in as well.

Steve Watt: They didn't even read the first three words of those posts. They did, but they were taking a box. That's fake. That's old school. I think what it comes down to is I think the critical difference between old school selling versus modern buyer-centric [00:10:00] social selling is back about that becoming the one that they wanna speak with, becoming the magnet. How do you do that? You do it by sharing content that is actually helpful and educational and relevant. Let's stop talking about connection requests and let's stop talking about direct messages, and let's start talking about how we engage in the public conversation.

What content do we share? What's the point? What's the intent behind that content? Is it everything just about my company and my product? That's not buyer-centric. Is everything about me and how great I am. That's not buyer-centric. But what if instead I start sharing content that you can use and benefit from without ever buying from me.

That's the gold standard to me. I sincerely believe you could go back through the content that I share on LinkedIn, you could read it and learn from it and become much better as an individual seller, as a sales leader, as a marketing leader, as an enablement leader without ever doing business with Seismic. [00:11:00] Now, so why is that helpful? I hope that I'm building reputation, I'm building relationship, and I'm building trust in a way that causes you, once you've absorbed some of that stuff, you start thinking, I want more of this. I want more of them. They're the kind of people I want to do business with and I get a lot of inbound for my company.

I had a lot of people reaching out to me saying, Steve, love what you're doing here. Tell me more about Seismic. I think, we've got some significant deals in play right now that came inbound to me. But my posts aren't pitching Seismic at all. I rarely even mention it. I do in passing and here and there, but that's not what it is. I, I fundamentally ask myself the so what question all the time with every post. So what? Could someone actually learn from this or sometimes it's just for fun. Will my target audience get a kick out of this? That, that's part of it too. But usually it's is this actually, interesting, relevant, valuable, helpful, such that they can do better in their jobs and do better in their roles without [00:12:00] buying from me?

And then it's leading to a business conversation instead of leading with a business conversation. So that's part of it. And the other part of it, as I said, is it's about operating in the public sphere. Salespeople wanna move into the private conversation way too fast.

It's Oh, Michelle liked my post. I'm gonna send her a direct message. Hey, Michelle, or, Oh, Michelle looks like she works in the kind of company that I sell to. I'm gonna send her a question. I'm gonna send her a direct message saying, Hey Michelle, what's keeping you up at night? You are not ready for a private conversation with me yet, but you will likely engage me in the public conversation. If I share great content, you may engage. If you share content, I will engage. And your guard is gonna be much more down. We can have a back and forth in the comments where we start to bond and we start to share insights and learnings and like I am having really super valuable conversations with a whole lot of very senior people at firms that I do [00:13:00] want to sell to in time.

But I'm slowing my role and I'm having great conversations in the public sphere with them long before I start moving into their DMs. And when I do move into their DMs, it's not with an ask. It's with further give, here's that article that we were talking about, or here's a link to that recording we were talking about. Here's that book that we were talking about. So it's public sphere. It's give, and it's getting past short term transactional thinking.

That's where it's that's the power. And the bar is so low, hardly anybody's doing this. It's not hard. Crazy. It's not hard to stand out. It's not hard to rise above.

Michelle J Raymond: My funny thing is if I look back at how long it takes to build a genuine relationship, say I start a new sales role and I've been given a brand new customer list that I have no history with.

The amount of time that it takes to build that relationship is six months, 12 months, longer. And some of the projects that I've worked on have two [00:14:00] year sales cycles, Not two minutes, not two posts, not two DMs, two years. And I don't think most people are patient enough to put the effort in on fewer people, but more focused and more genuine. And so I'm definitely in line with that.

Now for me, sales is my favourite role in the world because this is my context for it. I love problem solving and I love helping people. That's all sales is for me. The more I do of both, the more the numbers tick over which used to irritate my bosses because they'd say, Where are your numbers up to?

And I'd be like, Don't know. Don't care. I've got people to look after and my numbers would take care of themselves because I was doing the right things, frequent enough to make sure that the numbers took care of themselves.

So when you look at mindset for social selling, what mindsets should people go into this with? Cause I'm with you, if you go in with the wrong intent, people smell it from a mile away. They smell [00:15:00] your desperation. So what tips do you give for people that may not be sales people by trade? Maybe they're business owners or maybe they're in other departments. What can you offer that would help them to be more effective as far as mindset goes?

Steve Watt: Yeah, I think we've already touched on some of the things, right? It's about that honest intent to educate, inspire, and help. That's a big part of it. It's about moving beyond short term transactional outcomes. That's a big part of it. It's about nurturing relationships and building reputation and building trust.

That's a big part of it. I like to think of it as imagine a very busy highway and it's just, multi lane highway. Every lane is just jammed with cars, just like one after another. It's not moving. It's right in the peak of rush hour and there's an empty lane. Like, why isn't anyone in that lane? I'm gonna pull into that lane and I'm gonna blast past all of this traffic.

For me, that's what we're talking about here, [00:16:00] because so few people and so few firms are doing this or doing it well or doing it consistently. There's an empty lane here. As I said, the bar is low and it's not that hard to rise above, and it's a crazy noisy world out there.

And being heard, being seen, being understood, being appreciated is incredibly valuable and it's incredibly hard, and I just see that there's this empty lane. I'm gonna pull into that lane and I'm gonna hit the gas in that lane. I'm gonna let everybody else sit, bumper to bumper in this other traffic.

And I think that's a powerful way of thinking about it. Because most old sales mindsets, most old sales metrics and, and pretty much all of your competitors are sitting in that traffic and you're welcome to also, but I'm gonna pull into this other lane. That's a bit of an aspirational way of thinking about it, but when it comes like, but what does it really mean? It means all those things we've been talking about [00:17:00] already. It means sharing content that's valuable and helpful. It means joining into conversations that are already taking place and it's important.

Another important part of it is for people to realise that a lot of what you're doing, you're not gonna see. A lot of people, especially senior people, senior stakeholders, do not engage. Why? Because they know that if they do, a bunch of people are gonna jump on them. But they're lurking. They're out there, they're reading, they're judging, right?

 Like, it's amazing how often, and this is not just my own experience, I've heard this countless times from others as well, whether they say, some of my best opportunities come from people who never publicly engaged, but they were watching and then one day they sent me a note saying Love what you've been talking about, let's talk. And those can be the biggest sales. They can be the fastest sales, they can lead to the happiest customers because they have, over time, opted in [00:18:00] to what you've been putting out into the world.

I think it just, I'm all over the place in the way I'm talking about it, but it's just a head space that says I'm gonna do something that's way more buyer-centric and way more helpful than what other people are gonna do. And I'm gonna let go of some short term measurement and I'm gonna reap much greater rewards over.

Michelle J Raymond: Look, I know what it's like when there's so much passion behind this particular topic that my head just wants to tell everybody, so I totally get where you are coming from cause mine's doing the same. I'm sitting here cheering you on in silence going, Yes, Steve. Yes I am. I'm high fiving you from the other side.

So you talked about aspirational getting in your lane, but this is how it played out for me in my career. As I said, turned up at a new job in a new industry and I was selling raw materials and ingredients that went into beauty products.

And there are a lot of chemical names that I couldn't even pronounce Steve. I don't have a chemistry background, a science background, a beauty background. At that time I didn't even use the [00:19:00] products but I was tasked with selling those ingredients. And here's what happened, I realised I couldn't compete with the others in the industry who were in similar roles.

I couldn't compete with those that had technical backgrounds. I was never going to be the person that could show up and talk about how to fix the formulation. I was never gonna be the one that could probably pronounce most of those chemical names. Still to this day, I am rubbish at it. But what I became very good at is realising no one else was social selling. I could show people about trends that I'd sourced from all over the world, from an amazing niche community that I built over time. I could get access to people in all kinds of roles all over the world. There was no gatekeepers. That's what I love about LinkedIn with a bit of respect and a bit of etiquette, you can reach anyone that you want if you do the right things.

And so that's what made me unique. That's what made me stand out, and that's why I was so successful in that role. [00:20:00] It wasn't that I tried to become the most technical. I did do a bit of study and learn a few things so I could bring my skills up, but I was never gonna compete on that front, nor did I want to.

So I can see how, when you work out what makes you different and there isn't a lot of noise on LinkedIn, you're right, there is so much opportunity. It might feel like it's crowded, but I personally don't think that it is. In most industries, there's space for someone to go first, to lead the way and really own the industry.

So if you've got someone that's listening in here, might be an employee, might be a business owner, but how do you empower these people to shine on LinkedIn? So I know you talk about you don't want employees to become the wifi extenders for the company content. Talk a little bit about that as well. That would be amazing.

Steve Watt: Yeah. It starts at the top. It's very hard to build a social selling or a, like a proper buyer-centric social selling or a client-centric, audience-centric [00:21:00] employee advocacy capability if you don't have leadership from the top. And that does not mean that every senior executive needs to get it. But you need a few. You absolutely need a few and. They play a critical role in a number of ways. One is leading by example. No surprise, right?

A lot of bad things happen if none of the C-Suite participate in this. It sends a really bad message, right? It sends a message down through the organisation that this isn't real. It doesn't matter, it's probably just the flavour of the month and, maybe next quarter or the quarter after, we're gonna be on to something else. So I'm just gonna sit it out.

It also sends a message that I don't think a lot of people realise is it's this idea that I'm the CEO, I'm too busy for that. I'm too important for that. So then what does that make me feel like as the guy in the middle of you? I'm important too. I'm busy too. If I do this, does that make me look unimportant? Does it make me look like I'm like, I got time on my hands. Ooh, I don't want that. So a whole lot of terrible things happen if you don't have at least a few of your senior leaders really leaning in, in an [00:22:00] authentic way.

Beyond that, those senior leaders, need to give explicit permission, and I emphasise explicit permission. It's not enough to say, hey guys, we're gonna do some social selling, so make sure you show up to that training and good luck to you. They need to really explain, look, this is respected and it's not just allowed. Allowed is necessary but not sufficient. It's not only allowed, it's respected, it's appreciated, it's wanted. And you know, because there's a lot of old fears and mindsets to hold people back. Oh, if I update my LinkedIn profile, maybe my boss will think I'm looking for a new job.

Or if I'm posting on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever, maybe I'm gonna be seen to be wasting time when I should be working. And so you need explicit permission from senior leadership to say, we're not gonna force you to do this, but we hope you will, and we appreciate it and respect it. That is super valuable.

Then you need to enable and empower people to do it. You need to run sessions where you talk about these [00:23:00] mindsets and really talk about what a much more modern buyer-centric, client-centric mindset really looks like and why it's important. And then you need to move into the skill sets, okay?

In order to make that mindset real. What does that mean? Like how do we think about network growth? How do we think about content sharing? How do we think about what to say and what not to say? It may involve new tools like Seismic Live Social, little plug there. That may come into play as well, but you can't just buy a tool.

You can't buy my tool or anyone else's tool and just flip a switch and think it's gonna work. It's not. Like you've got to work, you know, so you've got this important senior role. Then you've got this whole mindset skill sets leading into tool sets and approaches. You're gonna probably have to rethink some of your metrics.

So there's a lot going on here. And the great news is that you don't have to go it alone. Like we help our clients thrive in this area. There are a whole lot of modern sales training and enablement firms that [00:24:00] help in these areas. You don't have to figure it out on your own, but at the same time, you can't just outsource it.

Like, you know, I look at every one of our customers who's successful in this area, and it's a partnership. They are doing real work internally and we are close partners with them and we can't do it alone. They can't do it alone, but together we can move mountains.

Michelle J Raymond: I'm again, high fiving you all the way here. Absolutely with you. And I think there's another piece which I'm gonna ask you about. For those CEOs, senior leaders, business owners that are listening in, that are frightened, that by encouraging this, by getting their employees out there, seen building their thought leadership, investing in them, and I asked our common friend, Danielle Guzman, the same thing.

What is your advice to those leaders that are fearful that these people will then get poached by other companies? I'd love your take on that aswell.

Steve Watt: Yeah. News flash your people are already being approached. [00:25:00] Like you can't hide them. And if you try to hide them, you're actually inadvertently pushing them towards the door.

 There's that, that cartoon that always kicks around on social. It's what if we train our people and they leave and the other guy says what if we don't train them and they stay? If you're not embracing this, first of all, you're falling behind as a firm. Huge problem right there. But beyond that, you're also signaling to your people that we don't respect you very much. We don't trust you very much. We're not really invested in your personal development as a modern professional. Which is then gonna make them more likely to take that call from that recruiter, to take that interview.

 Are you gonna lose some people? Yeah, of course you are, but you're gonna lose 'em anyway. Don't think that, Oh, Michelle got really great on social and she ended up leaving. That's because of social. No, if she was gonna leave, she was gonna leave.

And if anything really enabling and empowering her to be successful here probably kept her longer[00:26:00] and made her more productive and more valuable for the time that she was here, and probably caused her to say no to some outside opportunities.

Yeah I think it's an absolute fools error to think, Oh, we're just gonna clamp this stuff down. We're gonna hide our people and no one's ever gonna recruit them. Doesn't work that way.

Michelle J Raymond: So time to get the crystal ball out, Steve. I know you think about this a lot, and you talk about this a lot, but super connected enterprises. What lies ahead? Where do you see the future of social selling?

Steve Watt: Yeah, that's one of my big aspirational things.

You gotta name it and then you gotta paint a picture of what it is. A super connected enterprise, I believe this is going to be the future. What's the difference? Imagine two firms. Equal size, equal market cap, equal in every way, but in one of them, their people are highly connected to customers, prospects, [00:27:00] partners, industry influencers and shapers of all sorts.

And then the other, they're not, and the other, they're keeping their heads down and their mouths shut. I believe that all things being equal, that highly connected, that super connected enterprise is going to absolutely dominate the competition. It's like the ghost town on one hand. You think about a old west ghost town. There's like the signs there, the logo's there, but there's no people. There's like tumbleweeds blowing through the street. It's empty, it's sad. And then you've got the super connected enterprise and those like, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of relationships and conversations, the reputation earned.

All of this is gonna power that super connected enterprise to just be so much more successful than the ghost town. It's the all are gonna wanna work there cause we see how empowered and amazing their people are. We're all gonna wanna buy from them. We're all gonna wanna partner with them. We're gonna refer [00:28:00] them to our friends. We're gonna attend their events, we're gonna consume their content.

The super connected enterprise is gonna absolutely dominate their ghost town competitors. Often people ask me, Okay, so you know what companies are super connected? I'd say None. None. Literally none. This is aspirational at this point.

But the companies that are embracing the kinds of things that we've been talking about today, Michelle, they're on the road, right? They're starting to see it. They're starting to take action, and I think that if you let them get too far down the road ahead of you, you're gonna have a hell of a time catching up later.

Michelle J Raymond: I always tell my clients that if you give someone a head start of 12 months, 18 months, without investing a significant sum of money, of which most companies don't have, you've got no chance. If you give somebody a head start, it is too hard to catch up on a platform that is not a fast turnaround.

Like LinkedIn specifically, it's a long term play. And so I am totally with you on that one. And I think the other thing is [00:29:00] ultimately if we aren't connected, as you say, we're missing out on the sales opportunities, which then leads to a drop in revenue because your competitors are taking your business. Whoever is connected will get wind of those opportunities long before that you do.

And I think we see that more and more. My sales role changed from the keeper of info to almost getting told at the end that someone's already done all of their research and I was just in charge of logistics. How much, when could they have it? A couple of tech questions, and then it was like a done deal. There wasn't any negotiation. It was like, bang, done. And so I think if you're not connected in this way as well as complimenting all of the things that you're doing offline, Then you just miss out on opportunities and your competitors will grow. And that just starts a vicious cycle of trying to catch up in lots of different ways.

Steve Watt: I love to say that LinkedIn, I challenge people to stop thinking of it as a job board, stop thinking of it as an advertising channel. Stop thinking of it as a [00:30:00] hunting ground and start thinking of it as a conversation. Now think of it as the greatest ongoing business conversation the world has ever seen, and you know what it's happening with or without you. You can sit it out or you can join.

And of course, all your customers and prospects aren't there, but a lot are and more are joining all the time. And you know, who else is there? Your competitors are increasingly there. Do you really wanna sit this out? Do you really wanna let your competitors build their reputation and build their relationships and get involved in those thousands of conversations while you're like sitting on the sidelines? I wouldn't recommend it.

Michelle J Raymond: I'm with you. And you know the fact that in Australia, 48% of our population have a LinkedIn profile. If you wondering if they're on there, they're on there. Like it's that kind of numbers across the globe that we know the decision makers are on LinkedIn. We know the buyers, the C-suite, they're all here.

So I always talk about go fishing where the fish are. I'm only here because this is where I can [00:31:00] make the most money. Like it's that simple. It's difficult for us to wrap up on a topic that we are both so passionate about, but I need to do that. But before we go, I wanna ask you, I always ask everybody what is one tip to do with this topic that you think you could give people that wanna make a start, wanna make some inroads?

What's the best tip that you can give them to get them started?

Steve Watt: Don't think you have to be an expert. I coach a lot of sales people in this area. Some within Seismic, some within our customers, and some just, you know, LinkedIn friends. And I hear again and again, especially from people who are earlier in their career, it's I don't know what to say.

I'm not an expert. There's this idea that to bring your voice out into public, you have to have 20 years of experience. You have to be the leader in your space. It's not true. It's absolutely not true. You need to leave that behind.

You can show up and speak up in really honest, authentic ways without being an expert. You can share your learning. [00:32:00] One of, one of the most socially successful people at Seismic is a sales development rep in Germany who's like a year into her career. She's very new, but she's just learning out loud. She's just sharing what's working, what's not working, what she's learning, what she wishes that she knew sooner, and it's pulling people towards her because it really humanises her.

You can share your learnings, you can share things you're learning from your customers and your prospects, from your colleagues. You can share, your aspirations for what you know, the skills you're trying to develop. You do not have to be an expert to speak up. And then obviously as you go through your career and as you build our experience, now you've just got a whole lot more to talk about, but don't wait. Don't wait.

If you start early and start strong, you are gonna build a tremendous career competitive advantage versus your peers who are gonna say, I'm gonna wait until I'm 10 years in and then I'll be qualified to speak. Don't make that [00:33:00] mistake.

Michelle J Raymond: Look, and it does compound over time, and Steve, like you have dropped so much in such a short period of time.

I really appreciate everything that you've given to the audience in the show today, and I love your content and again, I'm encouraging everybody to go and go over to Steve's profile, connect or follow. If you've got any other questions that you have for him, I know that he will answer no problems at all and as will I.

Steve, thank you for your time. Next week I'm hosting this show myself, actually, and I'm gonna be talking about LinkedIn in 15 minutes a day. What can you do? What should you focus on? And there's no more excuses for those people who keep telling me, I don't have time to do LinkedIn, so I'm gonna take social selling in 15 minutes a day and see what I can come up with.

Steve Watt: I love it.

Michelle J Raymond: Yeah, look there's no more excuses. That's what Steve and I are here to tell everybody. No more excuses. You have to make this a priority. Steve Watt, it has been my absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for joining us.

Steve Watt: Thanks, Michelle.