Episode 38 A Day in the Life of a Social Seller

Jack Hubbard  00:00

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. 

Hello, everybody. Are you ready for a very fast paced, Jack Rants with Brynne!

Hi, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  00:36

Hi Jack, I'm ready for a very fast paced Jack Rants with Brynne. I'm excited about today.

Jack Hubbard  00:42

It's a great one. So in a Christmas of 2022. One of the things my wonderful wife does is she knows I read a sales book a week. And one of the books she bought me for Christmas of 2022 was a book called Atomic Babits by James Clear. And that's sort of what we're going to talk about today. And when I do a lot of speeches in schools on LinkedIn, one of the things I talk about is three by five by 15. Three things to do on LinkedIn, five days a week to take 15 minutes, but that's not enough. Brynne is going to dive into a whole bunch of stuff today about what to do in terms of a day in the life of a social seller. Are you ready Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  01:23

I am ready, Jack.

Jack Hubbard  01:25

Terrific. And this, by the way, is all in this ebook that we could download. And it'll include a lot more detail than we're going to go into here. But let's first start with check notifications.

Brynne Tillman  01:39

Yeah, I think this is even more important than checking your email notifications are specific to you and your network. And they are almost always actionable. So notifications can be things like people that have engaged on your content, people that have viewed your profile, though, we're gonna get into that but the notifications are telling you what is actionable with your network. And this is the place I start every single solitary day,

Jack Hubbard  02:10

no doubt about it. And me too. And it is so powerful. I was recently teaching a couple of bankers this and they, they had tons and tons of opportunities, but they didn't know what to do with it, they were frozen. So checking those notifications, I think first thing in the morning is exactly what I do during the day, of course, and then later on in the evening. Let's go on to the next one. You kind of alluded to this, but who's viewed your profile, very powerful.

Brynne Tillman  02:40

Yeah, and notifications will tell you but you're going to click through and get to who's viewed your profile to see who they are. And you can engage in, you know, there's different types of people that are showing up, there are some people that are showing up that you know, well, some people that you're already connected to, and some people you never heard of. And it's really important to respond to these folks. And in each of them and the text, the templates, it's all in the eBook, but each of them, we need to ask, may ask how you found me or got to my profile today, because that is what starts the conversation.

Jack Hubbard  03:20

Well, and think about this from a lending perspective, due diligence. If somebody is a second degree connection, instead of just discounting them, they're coming to you for a reason. And if they're a manufacturing company, and you want to work in the manufacturing space, you want to know that, but you may not know that unless you click on your profile. From a first degree connection perspective, they're coming to you again, for a reason. It's almost like they're a client, and you need to do some cross solving. So jumping on who's viewed your profile from time to time is a very good thing to do. The next thing I want to talk about is checking messages. Let's talk about that one. 

Brynne Tillman  04:01

Yeah and treat your messages as closely as you treat your emails. These are direct messages that are coming in from folks. Now, granted, there's spam in there, there's spam in your email. But could you imagine if you went 234 days without checking your email, you would be dropping the ball and opportunities every single day. So check your messages, it doesn't mean you have to respond to every single one. But don't miss an opportunity. 

Jack Hubbard  04:31

And you're so right about this. Unfortunately, there are a lot of spammers out there, a lot of people who are with Revlon don't get that or that they want me to start my own company. I'm 73 years old. I have my own company. I love it. Why would I do that? They just haven't checked the profile. So it's a lot of AI and a lot of spam. But within all of that there are some very, very important messages that you need to respond to. So that's a good one.

Brynne Tillman  04:59

Can I just before we go on I, this morning, I got an email from someone that said, Have you ever considered starting your own business? So I responded with Have you ever considered reading somebody's profile before you send a message? Why are you so mad? I'm like, I'm not mad. Just a waste of their time.

Jack Hubbard  05:25

Yeah. Now the good news about that is at least it wasn't a chatbot. That was a human being. I, you know, you and I follow a lot of great people on LinkedIn. And one of the messages that I love is for you to respond with something like well, I, you know, I'm not interested in that. But you might be interested in our training programme, it's $10,000. And people say, well, that stops those messages right away. 

Brynne Tillman  05:52

So funny, they probably need our training though.

Jack Hubbard  05:57

They probably do. Let's talk about managing your invitations. If somebody's going to reach out to you, we need to respond in some way.

Brynne Tillman  06:06

Absolutely! And really, there's three responses, there's an accept, a decline and a reply before accepting. And that's the one people don't use a lot. So, you know, Jack, you and I are very strongly relationship driven but we're networkers and we're happy to add people to our network that are meaningful. Maybe they engaged with our content, you know, there's a purpose, but we get a lot of connection requests from people that we might be on the fence with. We had a client, it's no longer this bank, but they've been, you know, swelled up but he was in Center City Market Street in Philadelphia, and he had just ignored all his connection requests. 

And there was one and I think it was from Spain, but it was from Europe, that there was a connection request. He's like, why would I accept this? I only do business in Philadelphia. So I reply first. And ask her, you know, you thanks for reaching out masque you found me. And that's like back even. And we talked about that a lot. In the who's viewed your profile. This is managing invitations. And by the way, this was over six months from the time she sent it. And she responded, thanks for getting back to me, we just opened our new headquarters in the Navy Yard or US headquarters in the Navy Yard in Philadelphia, and we were looking for a new bank, but we got it covered. 

He made an assumption that because they were in Europe, they're not going to need a bank in Philadelphia. So guys know our assumptions. You can decline if you know what spam is. When you accept, send a welcome message. We have that in what that looks like in the eBook. But don't unless you're 100% Sure it's spam. Make sure you're taking that third option, which is to reply before connecting.

Jack Hubbard  08:09

And you know, the first several that we've talked about are very reactive, but they're very time sensitive. It's like if somebody reaches out to your website via contact us, and they send us something, why don't we need to respond to that. And it's really similar to LinkedIn, you look at check notifications, who's viewed your profile, check messages and manage your invitations. Those are all very important, reactive and very time sensitive things. All right, let's flip it a little bit. Let's talk about pro activity. What are the things that you've taught me how to do and one of the things that a lot of bakers don't do as well as they could is to mind their clients connections?

Brynne Tillman  08:55

Yeah, and by the way, the step by step and even the messaging is in the ebook so you know, I'm looking we have one point we've got a tonne of people on and one person downloaded it, guys Download This eBook, it will change your way that you do business. It's amazing, but mine your clients connections, this is looking at slide number seven. If you do nothing else, even though you should be doing a lot of this, you need to do this. You need to go in and mine your make a list of the people that your clients are connected to, and run those names by them. You will have more new opportunities and a higher level of credibility and trust because it came through the existing client. Download This eBook, and we'll go right to number seven. I'm going to tell you this is the game changer. 

Jack Hubbard  09:52

It really is a game changer. And you know you don't want to do this in a mass kind of way where you download everything and just send an email. This is so powerful. And this is that one on one connection. So if you've got 15, maybe you talk about three, and you're sensitive to their time, etc, and then maybe there's some reciprocity that you can do, certainly for them. So that is a really powerful one. Here's another one that I absolutely love. And I was teaching a banker at my bank yesterday about how to do this. But she said, I never knew you could do this, and that sends mobile video messages. So I did it with her. And she was just blown away by it. And today, she reached out to me, she said, I reached out, I did three of them. And I got three people to respond to me. These are so powerful brands send mobile video messages, very easy to do, very often neglected.

Brynne Tillman  10:55

Yeah, and, you know, this is the Hyper personalization, one of the things that we talk about in our training is to take inventory of our existing connections and identify who we're connected to that we're ignoring. This is a perfect way to reconnect with someone that knows you. It's also a great welcome message when you accept a connection request, or someone accepts your connection request, just to say hi, great to have you in my network. I share lots of content around X, Y, and Z. What kind of content are you interested in? Start a conversation. And when they're seeing this video, no one else is doing this, you are going to stand out. So we now have three downloads. So many more people on the call, so many more people between LinkedIn and YouTube and a whole bunch of other places. And even x or Twitter or whatever. I'm telling you guys, it's free. Download the ebook.

Jack Hubbard  12:03

Yeah, it's really good. And by the way, for those of you that are on and it is a great audience today, if you do have a question, or an idea, please put it in the chat and we'll be happy to get to it. One of the things that people I think get the mistaken thought process around is that I have to be on LinkedIn an hour and a half a day. And bankers will tell me why I kind of do other stuff? Well, of course you do. And what we're talking about here, and it's in the eBook is some ideas around, okay, maybe do it around this time every day. That would be good. So here's Autumn, who by the way, is also registered for our November 15 webinar. We have almost 700 people in Autumn and I love this idea. I've been working with my social star Ambassador team to grow their network and engage. Thank you for that. That's really good. And whether you're a banker, or a consultant, or you're an entrepreneur, these tips will really really help you. And by the way, speaking of community banking, giving back to the community is so critical. And that's the next one Brynne give.

Brynne Tillman  13:15

Yeah, and I realized that a lot of people will have this in audio only. So the ebook is the modern banker.com/day. That's the modern banker.com/day. So give back, this is one of my favorites and I actually have this as a weekly tip and it's just I'm trying to be as transparent as possible. As much as I'd love to give back all day long. This is one that became a weekly event for me, but it's to write a recommendation for someone or make an introduction. I mean, there's so many things and there's a list in the book of things that you can do. And there's probably many more that we would love for you to share with us what you're doing. 

But giving back is about being a value to someone else without an agenda. It's just I just want to be a good neighbor, I want to be good, I just want to bring value or smile, give back could be a smile. I have a connection that sends me and you know, because I talk a lot about AI and all those things, sends me pictures of me singing songs. Is it valuable but it makes me giggle. Right he does these AI things and he's a sweet shout out to skip. So but right like so it's not like value always about business. It brings a smile on my face, right so I'm just kind of throwing that stuff out

Jack Hubbard  14:43

so selfless and think of if I've got people out there in my community that have given me the right to and the privilege to be connected to them. How can I not provide some value and I love and in the eBook this spells it all out. But I love one of the bullet points in this brand. It's to send new contacts, send new content to five first degree connections. And then you put in parentheses with no other motive. This is selfless. And believe me, it will lead to additional business not that's what you want or you don't. But it will lead to at least having better conversations. So I love to give back. That's wonderful. 

Brynne Tillman  15:25

Well, and it's trust based conversations because you don't have an agenda. And that's the key. I mean, and you know, Jack, we have been talking about this for years. Make sure the content is not it, that it's not your content. It's not your bank's content, that you've curated it, you know, we there's so much content available in Vertical IQ on their industry on their clients industry. Like there, you could get insights from RELPro about what's going on in their industry, right? There's so many places and both our sponsors, but we love them. And we think what they do is great, but make sure what you're sharing is a value to them without you in it.

Jack Hubbard  16:09

No, that's very true. And you talk about trust based selling. A long time ago when I started my business, st mired Hubbard, and in 2000, Kathy bought me a great book, which was called the trusted advisor. And I thought this is a really good book. And so I had nothing else to do at that point. We were brand new business, I picked up the phone called Charlie green. And we've become great industry friends. And one of the things I asked Charlie all the time is, can you define trust based selling, and he said, Trust based selling is not you versus me, it's you and me versus your problem. And when you get into that mindset of giving back and making the customer the focus, everything will take care of itself. It'll all take care of itself. 

So I remember 1960, and I was 10 years old. And it was safe to run around the neighborhood. But I knew it was time to come home for lunch and dinner because we had a bell outside our house. And my mom would ring the bell. And we would know it's time to come home. LinkedIn has provided an opportunity for us to ring the bell too, but it's not for dinner. Brynn. But it's for opportunities. 

Brynne Tillman  17:26

The opportunities pay for the dinner. So anyway. Yeah, so So ringing the bell is simple. Going to the profiles of people that you want to engage with, whether they're your clients, your prospects, your networking partners, industry experts that are sharing content that your buyers care about, that your clients care about. If they are a first degree connection, and you ring their bell, now, I will start to say if you ring their bell, on the desktop, this is a strange thing, I'm just going to say you get the most what LinkedIn calls the most the top posts that they have. If you do it on your mobile, you get a choice of all or top. So for some people like Jack I rang his bell on the desktop and went back on to my mobile and rang it there. So I'm gonna say, look, it's in the, it's on the details, right. But there are some people though, you want their top posts, or some people you want all posts, but here's the thing. 

You may say, Well, my clients are not really sharing a whole lot. But if something happens, maybe there's a press release, maybe there's an acquisition, maybe they hired a new employee. They do share content, when it's at the most meaningful times for them. It is our trigger to start conversations, right? These are opportunities to congratulate them. And then you know, take it offline a little bit, right? It's about starting conversations. It's ringing their bells. If they don't share anything, it doesn't go into your there's nothing goes into your notifications. It's not crowded. But what happens I am almost never on my homepage anymore. Because I am ringing the bell and I also have a Sales Navigator with save leads and their triggers. But I am only engaging right now, when there's enough with the people that I'm interested in engaging with. So I've customized in some ways my notifications to get pretty much about 80 or 90% of what's in there is actionable. 

Jack Hubbard  19:53

Yeah.I was on a podcast this morning. And I hate when people ask this but I understand that the interviewer had to say well wrapping this thing up, tell me one thing that people should know about selling today. And I said, you know so much. But I said, let me leave you with two kinds of sets of initials pm and Mim. He said, Well, tell me about that. I said, well, the two things that bankers should be looking at everyday are people in motion, and money in motion. Those two things can be found when you do exactly what Bryn says, which is ring their bell? All right, couple more find, share and engage on content. We talk about this all the time. Brynne but it's so powerful.

Brynne Tillman  20:39

Yeah, I mean, this is really very important. And we'll start with finding content. And the one, you know, we are such huge fans of Vertical IQ, not just because they're, I mean, they're our sponsor, because we were fans first. So let's just start there. But they curate an enormous amount of content. That way, that's not about banking, it's about banking clients and the clients of banking clients, right. It is absolutely a phenomenal place to personalize content. So finding and sharing content, finding and sharing on your newsfeed is one thing, but it's also about sharing individuals, right? The other thing, so we have, you know, engage on content, make sure you're looking at your notifications, that when you are on a profile, check out their activity, and if appropriate, engage on their posts. 

This is so important. The one thing that we don't have in this ebook that I'm gonna throw out is there's collaborative articles, where you can engage their uncertain topics. Our next version, we're going to add that in. It's relatively new. But the other thing is original content doesn't have to be blog posts, anymore, polls and other things. But here is the thing. You have to do this consistently. Right? Jack, you do every day, I do about three days a week. But you share content every single day and have a huge fan base that waits for your content. And I'm going to say by doing this by finding, sharing, creating content, we have original content, but so much of what you do is sharing other people's content that bankers would be interested in. And that is as meaningful if not more than sharing original content.

Jack Hubbard  22:42

Yeah. And you know, I was telling these bankers yesterday, and I was showing them the clock, the scheduler on LinkedIn, I will take and I do post seven days a week pretty much without fail. And on five of those days, I will actually pre schedule on Sunday night. So here's Sunday night, you're done with dinner. If the bears are on Sunday night football, it doesn't matter, they're going to lose anyway. So you might as well be productive. So yeah, a bunch of really good content, marketing, sales, leadership, strategic planning, whatever it is, and my target audience, obviously as bankers, so I'll schedule those things out. 

Now, if sometime during the week, somebody like Chris Nichols puts out a great piece of content, Apple back in, and I'll reschedule one of those posts for later in the week or over the weekend. And now I've got some current things that maximize my time. And the only way you're going to become a thought leader, if that's something that's your goal is you've got to be consistent with this. You can't do this once a month. And that's where this timing and this habits of the atomic habits tend to come in. Bring you talk about account centered sales, and spending a little time on that. What is that?

Brynne Tillman  24:06

A lot of you may know the term ABM or Account Based Marketing Well, typically in the world that you have and more in other industries than banking, but you are assigned a specific number of companies and that's it. 2025 companies, and you are 100% committed to those companies and you can't look outside. That's not typical in banking. So we call it account centered sales, because this is typical in banking, which is we have identified top 20, top 25, maybe even top 50 that we want to get into if other opportunities open up. Great. But as long as we've identified a specific number of companies that we would like to go after, there are definitely ways that we want to socially surround those organisations. and start conversations. I actually think in some ways this is the future of commercial banking. 

Because he is a Gartner. Sorry, I couldn't remember that Gartner has a statistic that there are 6.8 people. I don't know where the point went, maybe if someone went on to die or something, or Yeah, part timer, 6.8 people involved in deciding who, who they're going to work with. So as a banker, you may have, hey, I got my CFO in my pocket. He loves us. He's excited to work with us. Well, there's a lot of other influencers around that CFO, cio account centered sales, as you're talking that CFO, let's bring value to the other people, let's make sure we're on the CEOs, you know, on on the CEOs, radar, let's make sure that the people that report up to that CFO are well aware of us, and we're bringing them value. And now you can't work on 50, right? But maybe you take a couple of weeks, and you go, I'm this is not instead of other prospecting, by the way, right? Like this is in conjunction, but I'm going to take one company this week, and I'm going to socially surround them, and I am going to get them to see me as a resource and a big value. So that's the account center for sales. 

Jack Hubbard  26:31

That's wonderful. It's a great explanation. I was talking to these bankers the other day, and you mentioned influencers, and it's kind of interesting. A lot of people view influencers as people that are so far away from them, or people that are so famous that they, you know, that they couldn't touch them. So in some ways, that's true. You have over 65,000 followers, you are a significant influencer, Anthony Annarino, Mark Hunter, Meredith Elliot Powell, Jeb Blount, we could go on. But one of the things I talked to the bankers about that I was training is that people within your community can be influencers, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, or the Economic Development Commission, or some business owner that's very significantly involved in the community. They are a local influencer. So talk about finding and engaging on comment on content from influencers, whether they be national and international, or local.

Brynne Tillman  27:28

So I love this jack. And I love that you said your local influencers, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, but also the people on the committees of the Chamber of Commerce, the board, I'm on the board of my little local community. But I have the ear of a lot of people in the community because I'm on the board and I'm in a new membership development. I'm a great person for a local banker to network, right? Because I am talking with new businesses locally every single day. So absolutely, find the voices that are out there. There are we have and you're laughing at this, but this is huge. There is a local, I'm gonna call it a deli ish place. And Jarrett is the owner. And he is everywhere. He's on every so every pickup, he takes a picture with the person and the food. He's on more Facebook than LinkedIn as should be. But my goodness, what a great person to network with a key. He is so active. So take a look at your local Facebook businesses, retail and b2b because they are connecting now. How do you engage with their content? On Facebook, if there's even a picture engaging, and then reaching out saying I love that picture? That's my neighbor or you know, start these conversations. These are influencers in your neighborhood. Find your Mr. Rogers. 

Jack Hubbard  29:09

There you go. And look at what Jeff Nyman said. Brynne, back to your comment about account centered sales. Jeff would agree with us that it is the next step in working your top prospect list. There's no question about that. And we don't have time to talk about prospecting very much here. But I think one of the mistakes that bankers make in prospecting is they make it too big. If you can do account centered relationships and really focus on what you want. You're going to be far more effective. Now speaking of effectiveness, we've become very proficient at zoom. So we have two more to talk about. One is your thought around a networking zoom call or as you call it, virtual lunch.

Brynne Tillman  29:56

Yeah, and you know, look bankers, we are out and about, have physical lunches, go out and do it, right. But there are times where we may not have a whole lot of time to do that, during the shutdown is when we started doing this, and I have not stopped because it's an effective use of my time, especially if it's someone that's you may serve them as a bank, but they may be an hour drive, especially if you're in rural world, right? Send them. Well, we adore dash, or a Grub Hub or an Ubereats $25 gift card and say, I'd love to take you to lunch, virtually. They love this. They can order whatever they want from wherever they want. And literally, you can schedule at noon. You tell me what lunch, you know what time in the next couple of weeks works for you? Are you really going to eat lunch while you're on Zoom? 

I don't know. But the whole point is, you're treating them to lunch. And for $25. You know, don't, it'd be way more if you actually took them out. But it's a great way to get an hour of time. And make sure you're prepared with an agenda. Because I had someone do this. They learned it from somewhere else where I taught it. And they did this with me. And I'm thinking I charge $500 for the hour. But $25 He did what I taught him, I'm going to take him up on that. And he didn't have an agenda. They went oh my gosh, I'm so disinterested. So make sure there's some kind of agenda. And the agenda could be, you know, tell me about your business? Who are you working with? Let me see who I can connect you to. I want to learn more, but don't go in like, Hi. What should we talk about? Because they don't have time for that? 

Jack Hubbard  31:52

No. And think of this, you know, a lot of bankers believe a lot of people believe that the pandemic is over. And we don't do any virtual sales calls anymore. There is going to be a snowstorm in your town somewhere or a hurricane or, or people are going to go to their summer home. Being able to have a virtual lunch allows you to make a virtual call. But when you do that, make sure you're set with your background, you have good audio, yeah, good lighting, you're dressed well, and all those kinds of things that are really, really important. Well, the last thing to kind of wrap this up Brynn is Create. Now we can go into a lot of detail. And we do in the eBook, but talk about create.

Brynne Tillman  32:38

You know, create a lot of people like I'm not a writer. Well, it's not about writing anymore. There's a lot that we can do. And you know, yeah, we're great with Zoom. But let's say even individually on Zoom, or teams, jump in, record yourself, pull it down and take quotes. And we're not going to get into Chechi PT. But there's even easier ways to disseminate the content in those transcripts. But there are polls, there are things that you quotes inside of Canva, which is a freemium tool. But it shouldn't be all original content all day long. You have to mix it up. But at least once a week, give a great tip or great insight, or put out a great poll that leads back to your solution. No

Jack Hubbard  33:30

question about it. And as we wrap this thing up, I want to mention and this should be a given. But if you're if you do this, if your culture decides to do this, this has got to be lead managers out there include something like this in your sales meeting or your pipeline meeting. Maybe it's just one thing, and maybe it's just a question. Hey, how many messages did you get when you got your messages this week? What have you done with them, shining a light on these kinds of things really helped with consistency, it helps with accountability and accountability is a really powerful and a very, very good thing. Look, if you've got a dog, you know that a dog is very routine based, you get yourself a dog and get them into a routine. That's what we're talking about here. And that's what we're discussing here as well today. Brynne thank you for joining me on this great program. Lots of great stuff, reminding people how to get to the ebook again. 

Brynne Tillman  34:33

So you can go to the modern banker.com/day If you're watching live, or even in replay, you can scan the download if you're watching. If you're just listening, go ahead and go to the modern banker.com/day You'll also get an all access pass to our public library that has tons of resources and content free forever. 

Jack Hubbard  34:57

For sure, well, great day Brynne. Great to see you As always, thanks for your time. 

Brynne Tillman  35:02

Thank you. And you know, next week you are doing a special program.

Jack Hubbard  35:11

Yeah, I'm flying solo next week you're traveling with clients. And that's terrific. And so I'm going to kind of take a little bit of a divergence here. And I'm going to talk about some sales stuff that I think is really relevant, some best practices and some ideas for going into next year, which you ought to be selling for anyways. All right, wonderful. Thanks, guys. 

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. 

Don't miss an episode, visit themodernbanker.com/tmbpodcast. Leave us a review if you would. You can also listen to this program and the new Jack Rants with Modern Bankers on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Play and I Heart Radio. We're on YouTube as well. Subscribe at https://www.youtube.com/@TheModernBanker. Finally, don't forget, make today and every day a great client day!