Sales & Sketches: Chris Bogue on Winning LinkedIn with Video Comedy

TRANSCRIPT

Laugh Your Way to Sales Success – Creative Content that Sells. Guest: Chris Bogue

Michelle J Raymond: [00:00:00] And hello everyone. Welcome to the LinkedIn for B2B Growth show. I'm your host, Michelle J Raymond, and we are back on my favourite topic. We're gonna be talking about selling, social selling, selling on LinkedIn, all kinds of things to do with selling. So I have brought on the funniest guy that I know on LinkedIn that talks about selling Chris Bogue, welcome to the show.

Chris Bogue: Thanks for having me.

Michelle J Raymond: Now I reckon we're gonna go rogue, as we were just talking about just before the show started because I love that you have some unpopular opinions. But before we jump into some of this stuff, tell me how did you get started on LinkedIn? How did you end up here?

Chris Bogue: Complete accident. Never thought I would start my own business. Lord knows, I didn't think I would be, uh, LinkedIn content creator. You know, I was doing sales and I accidentally discovered that I was good on video. COVID was happening. I was selling to universities. I was selling to these big complicated institutions where everybody has a PhD and all of a sudden COVID happened.[00:01:00]

Couldn't call their office phone anymore cause they weren't there. Couldn't visit an educational conference, couldn't visit campus cause all our flights were cancelled and all our trips were cancelled. So I started getting on video and, um, I, I was not like a video editor at the time, but I have done some television work.

I've done some web series work and I've also done like a lot of sketch comedy and improv and standup and experimental theater in the city of Chicago. So yeah, I learned very quickly that I was better at most salespeople than the video thing, and I just decided to go for it cause I'm like, you know what?

There are so many books and processes for calling and emailing and running a sales presentation. Business schools don't teach video yet, so I'm gonna teach video. So I started working my network, getting gigs and then I went on LinkedIn so I could prospect new people to sell to.

And I took a look at the video content there and I couldn't help notice that it was bad. [00:02:00] It was really bad. It still is bad. So, I was like, Ooh, lucky me. All I need to do is do a little bit better than this and I can get noticed. And what I didn't expect was that I would actually fall in love with LinkedIn and it would cause me to get back into comedy.

Now the sketch comedy. Like that flame has reunited in me and it's a huge part of my brand. It's a huge part of the content I do. But yeah, it was all just kind of like I fell into the circumstance. I had to get more customers. I looked on LinkedIn. I saw an opportunity to do stuff that nobody else was doing.

And so, yeah, I was just like, I'm gonna go out and start doing stuff and I'm gonna be big and I'm gonna get attention. And anybody who doesn't like it, they're not in the club. You know, I'm gonna find the people who are here and who want something that's a little bit more raw, something that's a little bit more intimate, something that's a little bit, more self-aware, you [00:03:00] know?

And I always tell people LinkedIn is the only social platform for adults. There are no kids here. You don't have to compete with teenagers. And that means you can do adult humour. You know, you can do sophisticated jokes, you can, make higher brow references than you can in most venues because you have an audience that's more educated, and that has more income than the average audience member, you know?

So I have found that if you go on LinkedIn and you start doing things and you just again, treat the audience like adults, and all of a sudden it's a fantastically fun place.

Michelle J Raymond: Look, it absolutely is a fun place and we've had a pretty similar background. For me personally, again, didn't intend on being an entrepreneur.

Happened overnight, had to quit a job, woke up the next day. I quit in March, 2020, which is when COVID hit and lockdowns hit here in Australia. So lucky for me, the whole world was struggling because no one could go to those trade show or events or parade overseas visitors like we [00:04:00] used to do in the industry I came from.

So it all of a sudden just blew up. Oh, hang on a minute. We've got our decision makers on LinkedIn. All of our customers are on LinkedIn. Our suppliers are on LinkedIn. Everybody's here. The party's on LinkedIn. I really love your content because it does stand out in my feed. It's not same, same, which is why I wanted to have you here today.

Anybody that's listening, I'm gonna put Chris's LinkedIn profile details in the show notes, and I want you to go over to his profile, top right hand corner underneath the banner. Click on the bell so you don't miss his skitz. That's amazing because it is absolutely brilliant the way that you use humour to break through what is actually really important messages.

If you read between the lines, you're very, very clever at that. But let's talk about, you know, I'm all about B2B growth and I wanna know, how do you use video to actually increase sales? Like what's the connection between video and sales for you?

Chris Bogue: Yeah, so there's two types of video that I teach. So we've got one to one and we've got one to [00:05:00] many. One to one, that's me making a direct video to a prospect. One to many, it's probably gonna be more creative and, it's gonna be posted publicly and the goal is to demonstrate to my prospects that I understand their problems, right?

So again, when I want big attention grabbing stuff, when I wanna get in lots of newsfeeds, I make a one to many video. And when I want a sales meeting from a prospect, I send them a one-to-one video.

B2B companies do the opposite. They literally do the exact opposite of me. What they do is they create a single one to many video and they pretend like it's a one-to-one video and they send it to 5,000 people and it doesn't work. And they go, oh, video must not work.

Michelle J Raymond: Or LinkedIn doesn't work.

Chris Bogue: Yeah. And, and I have a very difficult, job sometimes because on the one hand, I need to make it look easy, right? I need to show people, Hey, [00:06:00] anybody can do this. You don't need to be a professional. You just need to be talking about something, you know well and you need to know who your audience is, and anyone can do this.

But at the same time, I need people to understand that they're bad at this, especially sales leaders. I, I look for signals. There are signals that a prospect is more likely to watch and respond to a video than other prospects.

And I categorise them. I have a system. It's green, yellow, red. Yellow's a coin flip. 50 50. I have no idea how this person will respond. Green is a person who's shown some inclination towards me. They've expressed some level of interest in my services. And red are people who it's a less than 50% chance, right? People who've ignored me, people who've ghosted me, people who've told me no.

So again, I do everything opposite the way B2B companies do it. So I send prospecting one-to-one direct videos to green leads and to yellow leads, right? People who are inclined towards me and people who are total [00:07:00] shot in the dark and I keep track of how that works.

Who do you think B2B sends direct videos to? The red leads? The people who are ignoring them. The people who've told them no 50 times. The people who set meetings and then don't show up. That's who they spend their time making videos for. And then they are stunned when it didn't work.

I don't know. I feel like I'm kind of crazy sometimes because I feel like I have discovered very simple ways to use video that aren't like super labour intensive. The example I always give is like, if your job is to set meetings, you know, if you're at SDR and you are are paid based on how many qualified meetings show up, send out some videos.

You know, the Friday before next week, and just look who's on the calendar? Oh, Michelle, just wanted to say, hey, looking forward to chatting with you on Tuesday. Here's one question I want you to think about. See you at 10:00 AM. It's a 15 second video. No screen shares, no crazy skits or anything [00:08:00] like that.

It's a simple human touch to keep the other person engaged. I don't teach my clients to use screen shares. I don't teach them to do any sort of gimmicks with whiteboards or anything like that. They talk to the audience for 30 seconds. And that's it.

Michelle J Raymond: You mean we have to talk to people to sell Chris? Like this is mind blowing, right?

And you said something before the show about we've gotta put this selling back into social selling, but there's a point that you've just raised there, which I'm out to put the nurturing relationships back into social selling. So there's a misconception as far as I'm concerned, on the platform, that if you just post valuable content and helpful content that somehow magically your business will grow.

And it is not that. We need to put that selling process that nurturing relationships. And I think that's the advantage that I personally have having 20 years plus in B2B sales, is that I've learned how to nurture and not just post and then think responding to comments is going to lead to [00:09:00] business. And it's quite often not the case. People assume it's my content, but no one sees how much effort happens in the background.

Now I just wonder with the businesses you work with, do you think it's the wrong KPIs driving the bad behaviour? Like is it a normally a whoever does the most calls wins? Or is there a, KPI you've seen in businesses that it's about quality connections? For me personally, I think they just go after the red because it's a numbers game.

Chris Bogue: Yeah. I don't know what's, like a nice way to say this, but my answer is they don't know what they're doing and it's not their fault. Video is not something that is, super proven in sales and video is harder than the other forms of sales because unlike, say, an email where all you have to do is worry about the words, it's like video is your performance on camera.

It's also the staging. It's also like your lighting in sound. One other difference between me and most video sellers too is I put [00:10:00] captions in my videos, so you see the words as I'm saying them, which means the video is also a reading experience. And I very much believe that, watching a video has become a text-based experience for an audience increasingly, who wants captions in their stuff.

So it's like there are seven different layers going on here all at one time and no one taught any of these salespeople how to do this. So what usually happens is the team works. They pay a lot of money for these solutions that can get video into their emails and LinkedIn. Everybody just kind of works in 10 different directions.

Everybody spends too much time making four videos that don't perform, and then they just blame the concept of video instead of their lack of skills. And I have to tell them, Hey, Okay, Mr, Cold calling is the only way to do it, I'm gonna make my LinkedIn post about how great cold calling is.

Did you get amazing at cold calling after three weeks or is that something [00:11:00] that took a couple years? Maybe not until your second or third sales role. None of the people out there who've done well for themselves on cold calling picked it up instantly, and if they did, it was probably because they had someone very talented who was coaching them and, and working with them.

You know, so I'm like, why did you expect to figure out video in two weeks? You've been making LinkedIn content for two months and you're not famous yet. Like, of course not. These things take time and, and you can get better at them objectively, you can.

Michelle J Raymond: The unreal expectations, which you know, often can be cause people look around the platform and they see other people getting better results and think it's because of X, Y, Z.

Probably they're in an engagement pod most likely. It runs rife on the platform. But I, I will never forget I moved from customer service into, I wanted to be face-to-face with customers. So that's how I got into sales. And they gave me a customer list and they said, off you go Michelle. Go and, you know, grow the business.

And I was like, okay, I've [00:12:00] always spoken to customers, that's fine. I'm comfortable with that. But I rang and I got blocked by a receptionist and we came back and I was like, How do you get around these people? And nobody could actually explain it to me in a way that made sense that because it had just become a part of their process, that through many, many times of trial and error, they eventually found what worked and then all of a sudden they were effective, but they could not explain it back to me, which was always something I found frustrating, which is why now I'm trying to, you know, kind of break down my processes just like you to be able to help other people to grow.

So we spoke a little bit about the personalised videos, but one of the things that I noticed in one of your recent posts is the three second test. Now explain this, how can a LinkedIn video fail the three second test?

Chris Bogue: Yeah, so when I say the three second test, I mean that LinkedIn's algorithm judges you based on whether or not you stop your audience in those first three seconds. So, um, somebody [00:13:00] watches two seconds of your video and continues scrolling. Like your post just got dinged for that. You need to find some way to keep them on the page, for longer.

This is where the captions come in because if you've got captions on the screen, it gives you one more tool at your disposal, right? You can have an interesting first line of dialogue that might capture your audience's attention. Most of the videos on LinkedIn are either a talking head, so it's just, one person talking to a camera or two talking heads like you and I look like right now.

And I found there's a million things you can do to get them to stop the scroll, you know, including, you see instruments in the background there. Sometimes I incorporate music into my stuff, especially my live shows. That's like a synthesizer that can play as like hundreds of different sounds.

 But I do all sorts of things where, The first three seconds of the video, the audience is like, what? And then they unmute or they continue watching. For content it's very important that something [00:14:00] sticks out in those first three seconds. And very often what happens is, the people I coach, they'll send me their videos or I'll be reviewing their videos with them.

And really the most interesting part of the video they bury at like the 45 second mark, you know, and the beginning of the video is this long kind of exposition where they're explaining why they're qualified to talk about the subject or whatever, and I just tell them, Hey, that shot where you cut away and it's someone throwing a baseball at you and you like dodging, put that as the first thing they see.

You know, start in the middle of the action, then pull it back and give your exposition. But you need to have that breakout moment where the audience is like, what, what just happened? And then dig into it, you know, but it's like you gotta front load some action.

Michelle J Raymond: I think it's funny because I do the same with posts with people. They have the most amazing information that is so far down the post that everybody's [00:15:00] already scrolled past it. The concept remains across video or any type of content. If they don't stop scrolling. It doesn't matter how brilliant you are or how funny you are or how creative you are, that's our first job.

Do you have ways that you think people can do that? Like what are some of your suggestions for how we can interrupt the pattern in the feed so that someone might have a better chance of others stopping on their videos?

Chris Bogue: Yeah, so I've got a couple things that I do. I think people just need to play more with emotions. One thing that's big about my comedy is I believe that a comedy is a lot of opposing energies bouncing off of each other.

You think about classic comedy acts, you know, you had the setup. Person and the straight man. And You need both of them for that comic equation to work off. You need the ridiculous person, and then you need the frustrated person who's like [frustrated sound] like that's where that magic comes from.

Sometimes people think the only two options available to them on LinkedIn are extreme [00:16:00] joy and extreme sadness. Like the only story they can tell is the one where like they were destitute and poor and now look at them. They're so rich. That's like they're going from one extreme to another and I'm like, actually, you can just show up as especially thoughtful.

Or if there's something that's confusing to you, lean into the confusion. And oftentimes, the comedy is just somebody who's really like earnestly excited, bouncing off of someone who is like, Very distracted, or, you know, there's all these different relatable feelings we have.

I'm gonna scare your audience right now. This advice terrified me when I first heard it, but when I started making video content, I was getting a lot of input from creators, filmmakers, people who have built million dollar content businesses for themselves on YouTube and TikTok.

And a very successful YouTuber told me, every 10 seconds you could lose your audience. Every 10 seconds, something's gotta change. [00:17:00] Maybe that's a different shot. Maybe that's text on screen. Maybe that's a sound effect or maybe that's a change in emotion. And yeah, a lot of what you see in my comedy, the reason why my comedy works the way it does, is because I will bounce off to some absurd mind bending, you know, like ridiculous sketch, and then it bounces into something that's more familiar.

And then it cuts back to me as the narrator talking about, you know, something kind of smart. And it's like you get this wonderful little taste of like, here's your serious material bouncing off of this absurd, I don't know what's gonna happen kind of situation. And just even in there, you've got this little tension within the video, you know?

And that back and forth kind of ping pong is enough to keep them watching, but every 10 seconds leads them to the next moment. And when I make one video, it's not just one thing. It's like oftentimes five different bits that the audience progresses through.

Michelle J Raymond: It sure is, and they're just so fun and I [00:18:00] like that you're not particularly doing it at the expense of any person, but it is so relatable and that's why I enjoy them because your comedy is not intended to put others down.

Your comedy is there to highlight a genuine thing that's going on out there that when I watch them, I go, oh my God, yes. Like I can see myself in that. And that is an everyday situation, which happens in everyday life. And so that's why I've particularly enjoyed it.

But for me, Chris, like when I'm looking at that kind of stuff and I'm talking to some of my clients and we talk video, their normal reaction is, let's run a million miles the other way.

There is something about when it comes to like the power of video, that they get really awkward, they get self-conscious. Do you have some tips around that so that we can get people over that hurdle and at least in front of the camera.

Chris Bogue: Yeah. So I've got a lot of tips for that. One is just a mindset shift. You're not going out there to make the [00:19:00] most perfect video of all time. You're gonna go out there as a person who regularly talks about something. You're gonna figure out what that is. You're gonna figure out what your content pillars are.

What I tell people is I'm not here to make you perfect. I'm just here to get you out there regularly. Every single person I work with is like, look, I don't know what good content is. You don't know what good content is. The audience is going to reveal that to us. This is one of those things that like, it could be terrible news or it could be great news depending on how you wanna take it.

But I'm like, you are going to disagree with your audience sometimes about what good content is. You are gonna work so hard sometimes on something that's really special to you. And I do it all the time where I make the advanced video with all the characters and it just bombs.

And then the thing you rattle off in 30 seconds is the thing that blows up and that's okay. What you wanna do is as you're putting stuff out there, you start noticing what's landing, and then that [00:20:00] provides a roadmap for what you wanna give your audience more of. So it's like, oh, whenever I cover this topic, it performs better. All right. I guess I'm gonna give more material on that topic.

Oh, I came out there with this point of view. And that point of view really landed with my audience. Let's write some more stuff from that point of view. All it takes is a little bit of traction and you start realising, I think I've got something here. And once one of them hits, It's intoxicating cause you know you can do it again. You know you can do it again.

I guess the best thing I could say is, if the video is bad, they're probably just gonna scroll past. People are afraid of being made fun of. It is the most normal feeling on earth to worry about your appearance. When you are putting your yourself out there, when you're putting your image out for public consumption, trust me, I get it. I still feel that.

The audience really isn't thinking about that though. They're not looking at you the same way you're looking at you. If what you're saying resonates with them, all of a sudden they don't really care who you are, like you've got their [00:21:00] attention.

Michelle J Raymond: Oh, that relatability is what we are looking for, just as much as being informed or educated. If I look at my own journey, whether it's on video like this, You know, back in the beginning I would rewatch the replays so I could improve what I was doing.

And I would hate the sound of my own voice Like I had all these stories about, my mum used to make fun of my voicemail messages cause they sound really, really girly and she would actually say, You know, am I calling like we had these 0055 numbers, which were the phone sex lines back in the 1990s, and my mum said I had a voice like that, which is even weirder. She went to church every Sunday, so it really messed with my head.

And 20 odd years later, I'm still here telling that same story, but the thing that I didn't like about my voice, Is the actual thing that now makes me stand out when I'm on guesting on other podcasts around the world because people go, oh, there's an Aussie accent. It stands out in amongst all of my American podcasts that I go on.

So it can often be the thing that [00:22:00] we think and we don't like, that our audience actually is drawn to, which I found just blew my mind. The only way that I've been able to get over it is I don't do this show for me. I do this show for other people, for them to have an impact for them to grow their B2B.

And so the more I stay with my mind in their shoes, the more that I don't even think about is my hair outta place, which hopefully it's not. That's good check. But the whole thing is, is it's just for other people. And when you think about that, you get out of your own head and it's just so much like it's liberating for me, which is what I love.

But there was one thing that I found really interesting. So your comedy sketches, when I look at them, I mean, they're brilliant and they don't happen by accident, I'm guessing. But one of the things you said was your secret to humour on video is actually getting organised, and you had a really cool Excel spreadsheet where you laid it out.

As someone that's not great with the organisation when it comes to my content. Talk me [00:23:00] through this. What are the advantages and what kind of things can I put into this organisation so I can have a crack at being funny?

Chris Bogue: Yeah, so I always tell people the version of you that's not trying to be funny is the version of you that's funny.

And the people who are nervous about doing comedy, they always tell me the same thing. They're like, I'm not funny. I can never do comedy. I can never, never do standup. I could never do improv. But when it's just me and my friends hanging out, I'm funny. And I go, yeah, that's the version of you, that's funny.

That's the version of you we're gonna get out there on camera. For me, I'm always commenting on LinkedIn. I'm gonna, this is the best tip I can give in this interview. This is the most valuable tip I'm gonna give right here. Um, download your data from LinkedIn. You can do this for free.

All you need to do is go into your settings, go to privacy, get a copy of your data. You can download all your messages, all your comments, all everything in, a spreadsheet. What I do is I regularly download my comments. I add an extra row of check boxes so I can check all the ones that are decent [00:24:00] writing prompts.

And then, I make my categories cause there's the different topics I talk about. This is how I stay relevant. This is how I stay top of mind. I'm always talking about the things my prospects care about because I'm always commenting on their stuff on LinkedIn.

There's something about specifics, like specifics is a word we use in improv. I just learned like you never walk into a bar in an improv scene and say, I'll have a drink cause nobody says that. If you go in there and say, I'll have a diet Dr. Pepper, that's specific and 20 minutes later, if you come into a scene and you're like, diet Dr. Pepper, they know I'm that guy from 20 minutes ago.

And again, I'll, I'll do this with the comedy, but sometimes that specific is an emotion. An example is I have this infomercial. I use infomercials to sell my stuff. They're very absurd. They're very strange. I've got my two characters. I've got Mr. Sherbet, who lives in this weird, like nineties, kind of like rainbow world. And his thing is he's, he's our positivity coach. So he's of course seething with rage, [00:25:00] underneath it all.

Uh, and then it's me as like a cold caller kind of calling him for the first time. I always love to do scenes where both characters are kind of equally irrational, but from an understandable place. You know, so it's one version of me that's the person who's very annoyed with cold callers, and it's the one version of me that's very nervous, trying very hard to get a sale.

I'm not really making fun of either. I'm, I'm embodying both of them and I'm trying to get the audience to, to, uh, empathize with both sides, but, it's just a basic cold call. Again, it'll jump around, it'll have jokes, it'll have these changes in, in tone and, uh, emotion.

But I'm like, that was a video about how to write an email, you know? It was inspired by some post that I saw of somebody who just like, wanted email advice. I'm always doing stuff about work, but I'm trying to find like, what is interesting about this. What is human about this?

And I firmly believe that comedy comes from [00:26:00] this gap between how we're supposed to feel and how we actually feel. You know, what people are supposed to do versus what they actually do when nobody's looking. I look for those moments, uh, all the time on LinkedIn and sales, to put it in my business context, we can all relate.

Michelle J Raymond: You must have an absolute field day because there is just a never ending list of content ideas, I'm sure that comes through that feed when you are connected with community, because ultimately people are on the platform so that they can find answers to problems, you know, and they may not want to ask their boss, their colleague, or people that they get measured by. So from that perspective, I think it's brilliant.

I would love to see your lineup of all of your wigs at home. I hope that shows up in a post cause I, I think they're just brilliant. All of them.

Chris Bogue: It's turning into a problem. Like the day after Halloween, I just go wild and just buy a bunch of costumes and then like, that's, that's often how the characters get created.

I'm like, well, I've got a prisoner [00:27:00] striped outfit and like I made like a knockoff hamburgler character. It's called the hotdogurglar. It's very stupid, but again, it's like I got a business to run. I gotta scroll to stop. So what are you gonna do?

Michelle J Raymond: I love it. Now, you did give us a great tip, but I love to always end the show with an actionable tip that someone that, let's say they're a little bit inspired and they wanna go away and make their first video and have a go at maybe doing something a little creative.

Is there a type of video or a style or a length or anything that you can give them to just give them the confidence to give it a go?

Chris Bogue: Yeah, I would say, uh, number one tip, and it's gonna sound obvious, but it's not. Look directly into the lens the entire time. New content creators, me included. It's very human to want to look at your own appearance on camera. You can't do that. You'll get these little micro movements in your eyes [00:28:00] that read like nervousness. Yeah, you're never gonna quite focus.

Whereas like if you're always looking at this, like if you can set up your camera so you're not seeing the screen, you're looking at the back of it, you will have perfect eye contact the whole time.

And even just that, if you just look more confident in what you're saying than the rest of your feed, that's gonna stop the scroll. So I'd say look at the lens, and I know this is a two parter, piece of advice, but I'll say this is just some, something I learned very much. You have to have a space where video or shooting video is easy.

MySpace, I shoot a lot of videos here at the desk. I have good lighting here. It's well framed. I don't need to to clean up a bunch of stuff every time I wanna shoot something. So maybe that room is in your basement or your office or your living room or something. If you have a room that has better natural light in it, you should have a little corner with your tripod or whatever.

And that's just your filming space, you know? And it's like, um, if you've always got the space, if the light is always in the same place, then all you gotta worry [00:29:00] about is, is, what words are you saying?

Michelle J Raymond: I can't say enough about that particular tip because my very first video, I held up the iPhone and put it on a tripod and I looked at myself instead of looking at the lens like you've just told us, and I looked like I was going cross-eyed.

And I was like, but I was looking straight in the middle of the phone, like, what is going on? And I could not work it out for the life of me. So whilst that may seem like a very simple tip, whether it's taking a selfie on the weekend or making a LinkedIn video that you want to grab people's attention, like it is a winner.

So Chris, we have covered so much today and I appreciate you coming on the show. I'll be making sure that everybody obviously has your contact details if they wanna reach out and work with you and learn how to make these really great videos that stop the scroll and get attention and ultimately grow your B2B business.

So I appreciate you and thanks for coming on the show.

Chris Bogue: Yeah, thanks for having me.[00:30:00]