Social Selling with Troy Munson

Priyanka: Hello and welcome to another LinkedIn live. Before I get started, can anybody just tell me if they can hear us and listen to us clearly there's a 10 seconds lag, so we'll have to wait a little bit.

Yep. I think people can hear us. All right. All right. So let's get started. Today I have a very special guest with me a good friend who I met on LinkedIn, by the way and he has been apart from being a great account executive at multiple places. Yeah. So now he's at Proofpoint.

Previously, he has been at Metadata, Dremio, MongoDB, Symantec and Apple as well. So quite a long sales journey. And that's why I thought we, we should ask Troy to be on our LinkedIn live. Today to listen to him about his journey on how he started writing on LinkedIn how social selling has helped in, in, in work, in life, in relationships et cetera.

So yeah, glad to have you here, Troy. Thanks for joining me. Yeah. 

Troy: Thanks so much for having me. It's it should be a blast. Thanks. 

Priyanka: Cool. First of all first question, when did you start writing on LinkedIn and why did that even occur to you? 

Troy: Yeah. So this is, it's a weird journey with how I got started on LinkedIn.

So about four years ago, Is when I started using LinkedIn to actually prospect into the people that I wanted to reach out to and book meetings, but I wasn't really posting unless it was your typical marketing updates where marketing would tell you to go post stuff on social because there's a new feature release and things like that.

And then at Dreamio, which was about two years ago I was really big on, I would be connecting with my ICP on LinkedIn. And at that time it was data analytics and data engineering. But I would connect with as many people as I possibly could, because at the time I had hundreds of accounts, I own the entire Southeast.

And then when I would get a lot of people in my ICP to connect with me, I would just reach out to them and share stuff specific to Dremio only. And I would run a lot of polls. This is back in the day when polls were like the big thing to do, and it was the best way to get engagement. And so when I ran those polls, I ran them in a way where.

I was pretty much setting it up to where I was asking questions for, I was essentially fishing for pain because I was asking questions knowing that our product could solve for it. And then anybody that would answer the questions, I'd then reach out to them a couple of days later and be like, Hey, I know that you had pain with this.

Again, at this time, I still wasn't posting regularly. It wasn't until metadata about nine months ago, I started posting regularly about. Hey, like I'm breaking into meetings. I'm moving deals along, I'm closing deals. And I think that I should just share what I'm doing. There's no reason not to share what I'm doing.

And if you follow me or any posts that I've posted for the most part, I try to make every single thing that I post. Hey, literally step by step, here is how I booked this meeting last week, go give it a shot. Or here's how I booked three meetings, remove this deal, or close this deal. So about nine months ago I started posting every single day.

And, I've missed a few days. There was about six months where I would post twice a day and I did not miss a single day. And then it gets tiring. It's, LinkedIn is very taxing. It can take a toll on you. You can be sitting, you'll get off work and you'll be on your phone just looking at LinkedIn, engaging and all that stuff.

But now it's like back then I would post at 7 a. m. central time every single morning. Now it's just when I think of something throughout the day, I'll send a post and I'll miss a day here and there. But yeah, so I'd say. It's been a long LinkedIn journey when it comes to sales, but when I, when it comes to regularly posting nine months ago is when I started really going at it.

Priyanka: Yeah. I think, yeah, the taxing part it, at the end of the day, it's a social platform. It does to you after a while. Yeah that's one thing, but Another thing where you said that you can miss days here and there and doesn't matter. But initially, when you're trying to get into the rhythm of setting up, you, I have to write every day that's a mindset.

You really need that routine, right? 7 a. m. or like for me, it was 11 a. m. IST. I'm going to post something these days. It's not as much as I, when I started like a year ago, one and a half years ago, early 2022. That's when I was like, you know what, I'm going to post at this time and whatever, no matter what, I'll stop everything.

I'll just write and post. So yeah, I think that's that was good. Going to the second question how has it benefited you? From an A perspective, like it's got revenue, it has got you prospects who went cold, they've come back to you after seeing your post or something like that. If you can talk about that.

Troy: Yeah. Yeah. So from an account executive perspective, there's a couple of high level overview things that I think about. The first one is really helped my writing in general. And so back then I would always, make prospecting messages where I'm talking in internal company jargon, cause it's how we talk to our employees at our company.

Like they understand it. Everybody that we typically talk to understands it because we're just. So focused on talking to employees. So it's helped me really with my writing and how I'm writing my prospecting emails, my prospecting messages on LinkedIn to make things way more clear one thing about me is I don't read I skim a lot of stuff and I listened to a lot of podcasts, but I suck at reading.

It's not that I can't read, I just don't have the attention span to so that resulted into me not having a, this large vocabulary, but it's actually really helped me in sales. Because now I'm not trying to sound really smart, I'm just being me. So I think I've gotten really good at writing when it comes to making things very clear of what I'm presenting.

And then the second thing from an AE perspective as a high level overview, we can dive a little bit more into specifics, but I've had many old executives that I've worked with at startups and even sales leaders that have reached out to me saying, Hey, whenever you're looking to make the jump, let me know.

And they're pretty much offering me a job right there on the spot, which is really cool. By the way, I'm not looking to leave anytime soon, but I'm always welcome to have conversations. See why people are reaching out and things like that. So it's helped me. I feel like I won't ever have to look for a job.

If that sounds like I don't want that to come off any way, but I think that's helped me a lot. But I guess to get into more of the specifics on the side, I'll break it down into two things. Because right now I'm at proof point. I have less than 10 accounts that I can prospect into. And then before proof point five, six months ago, I was at metadata, like you mentioned, and I had 400, 500 accounts that I could break into.

So it's a completely different prospecting style. And a completely different persona. I went from selling to marketers to selling to a chief information security officers, which they've been at the company for 30 years. They're set in their ways. They have, whatever they have going on is what they have going on.

So at metadata, it helped me a lot with. One marketers are extremely active on LinkedIn. And I feel like most posts these days that you read on LinkedIn are targeted towards people that target marketers or sales reps or any sort of like account executive. But what about the people that do target cybersecurity professionals or even like manufacturing and supply chain and logistics?

It's a completely different ball game than targeting marketers and sales reps because they're very active on LinkedIn. So with metadata, it's helped me booked a lot of meetings and what I was doing at metadata was I was simply just we had a benchmark report that metadata comes out with every year.

So many statistics that you can grab from there. And if anybody's looking to post on LinkedIn, this is like the secret sauce is that first sentence that you post on LinkedIn, I think that it should always include a number. So for example, instead of this is how I booked the meeting, it's, this is how I booked three meetings with a company that does 120 million in revenue or something like that.

It's much more relevant and it's. People can resonate with it more, but with metadata, I posted a lot of our benchmark report because we had so many statistics of what converted that, what converted more, which call to action converted more, which channels converting more, what's the row as all that good stuff.

I would take that. So I was essentially just taking other content, but making it into digestible pieces. But what I do as an account executive is I connect with my ICP. All day, every single morning I'll go in and I'll connect with my ICP and other 25, 30 people. So it metadata, it was marketing. And because I connect with them the same day that they connect with you or the day after they'll actually see your posts.

So then you start resonating more with your audience and now they're seeing your face and they're seeing who you are and you're not posting. metadata stuff. You're posting actual helpful tips. So help me book a lot of meetings and metadata. It helped me move a lot of stale deals because then I'm connected with people at the company that I'm working with that aren't the people that I'm working with, throughout the deal process, just trying to get a little bit more insider information.

And then it just helped me build a reputation with marketers and sales reps on LinkedIn as well. When I was at metadata, because I'm just engaging with everybody's content. Like I said, marketing and sales is very active on LinkedIn. So I was just engaging with a ton of content. There was a lot to say, but I'm going to turn the corner here.

It's a proof point. So that was what I was doing at metadata, lots of posting, lots of engagement, used it less for booking meetings and more of letting people know who I was and actually email plus LinkedIn combination. When people are familiar with you it's a really deadly combination when it comes to.

But with Proofpoint I'm targeting people that are typically 50, 60 years old. They've been at the company for 30 years. They're not active on LinkedIn. And that was a huge pivot for me is I'm really active on LinkedIn and they're not active on LinkedIn. And this just doesn't, this just doesn't mix.

But what I found was. They'll post a lot about their company on LinkedIn like when marketing forces them to post so it allows it feeds me Information of what's going on at the companies I'll comment on all of their posts. I'll endorse them. I'll do all that stuff just to let like I want them There's no Troy months in the name however, the entry level people at the companies that I reach out to are pretty active on LinkedIn and So what I do today when I'm in this environment where not a lot of people are active on LinkedIn, and I really only have nine accounts that I can break into is entry level people.

The first thing I messaged them is, Hey, do you mind if I share with you? So I'm in cyber security today. I'll say, Hey, do you mind if I share with you some cyber security threats that we're seeing? We typically find some weekly. I'm not asking for a pitch. I'm literally just giving them stuff without ever asking for anything.

And most of the time they'll say, yeah, that would be really helpful because they want to know this stuff. They don't want to be in a situation where they get attacked by something cyber security wise, and then now they're coming to me. So I give, I say, Hey, do you mind if I share this with you? I give, and then something ends up sticking over the next few weeks where they ask a little bit more information.

And then I get. about the company, use that information to then email the executives. But that's how I do it as a, as an account executive today. And that's how it's helped me. It's just getting information about companies literally getting job offers, I'd say maybe like monthly or so, or at least conversations getting better at writing and then just booking meetings and moving deals along.

Priyanka: Oh that, that was a lot. And. And it is good that it's a lot.

Yeah, I think when you sell to marketers and salespeople or even GTM as a whole which we do at factors. And I remember initially when we were starting outbound really long ago, that was in late 2021, maybe we had this thing that. How would anyone know about this new company without any digital presence whatsoever?

So one of our outbound strategies was to get. Writing on LinkedIn doesn't matter how bad it was. Like if I scroll down to posts, which are like some one and a half years old, they'll be like, I wouldn't post it today. Yeah but at the end of the day, it helped our digital presence in long term.

Today we get a lot of traffic from organic social, HubSpot form option where. Where they're like, where did they hear us about the, they say, right up LinkedIn, right? And that's also because we sell to marketers and they are hanging around LinkedIn all the time. So it worked for us well. So if you're selling to marketers, salespeople, GTM people, then I think one of your sales strategies should be to.

Right on LinkedIn. Yeah, this, yeah, this has been very helpful for us at factors and and like you said it does work for any geography any company, I think, yeah, I think 

Troy: that just to feed off that real quick, I think that. Honestly, if you are a startup and you can get your employees to post on LinkedIn, not only about the startup, it's okay to pitch the startup here and there, but most companies have use cases.

Most companies have success stories. You can literally take that information, digest it into like a. Just a very easy to read paragraph. If you're a startup, I believe if you can get most of your sales reps to post on LinkedIn four times a week or anything like that, and it's less, Hey, here's a new feature that we just rolled out and more of, Hey, here's how we help, or here's what we're seeing in the market today.

I think that's a competitive advantage. I don't think enough companies let their employees or at least encourage their employees. Metadata encourages all their employees to post on LinkedIn. Same with, look at Gong. Gong is, every single person there is now blown up on LinkedIn, and it seems like they all have a side gig where they're making an extra six figures just because Gong shouts them out all the time.

Everyone knows Gong, and it's because they're present. And I don't know. I just think that any sort of startup. Doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how many employees, if you're a startup, especially the CEO level, the CEO can start posting. I look at companies like trumpet with Rory and I look at journey with Brendan and things like that.

And they're building these brands and Neil with page, they're building these brands themselves. And they're also in Nectar as well. Nectar is really big on LinkedIn. They, all the employees just post, stuff that are, that's relevant and stuff that people care about, and it's nothing about their product, which is incredible.

Yeah. 

Priyanka: Yeah. Refine Labs is another example that I think of OG posting on LinkedIn stuff. I think it was Refine Labs and Gong who started this employee advocacy thing. LinkedIn also incentivizes that I know this because I managed factors company page as well. And when I was like one fine day I wake up and there's like a.

Employee advocacy tab and yeah and it does tell me that we all knew that LinkedIn encourages this, but now we confirmed that, hey, LinkedIn does want your employees to, advocate for you in what matter. Like I'll take a little bit detour on, on this and I'll continue on this line.

So don't you think that getting employees to post on LinkedIn or telling people to post from their personal accounts is a bit tough. Like people have a mental barrier that, Oh, on social, this is a professional platform and Instagram that I can post anything. It's, they have this mental barrier of going social, right?

Even the most extrovert people. I know in my life they're still not very extrovert on, on LinkedIn. Yeah, because it's a professional platform. It's for me. Why would I write about things? 

Troy: Yeah. And people are scared to sound dumb. They don't want to post something that people disagree with.

I was actually speaking with a founder the other day and he made a post. And then somebody disagreed with him on the post, and it made him feel a little weird inside, so he deleted the post. Not everything I post and not everything anybody posts, everybody agrees with. Actually, one person, Chris Walker, you talked about RefineLabs, very against the grain marketing thinking.

And posts I thought he was crazy when he was talking about all this revenue, R and D screw marketing. It's all about revenue, R and D. And I was like what is this stuff? And then I thought about it more. And at the end of the day, if all teams aligned to revenue, it is really revenue research and discovery.

That's what it is. So yeah, I think a lot of people are. Don't want people to disagree with them. They don't want to share their opinions or their thoughts, and maybe they just think that when they hit post and they get zero likes, it also could be like when I have a post and it gets four or five likes it, it's like, Ooh, man, I, that hurts, that stings a little bit.

But it's just, sometimes you got to let go of the emotions there and. I don't know. I've said it in a post this week. If you're a BDR, if you're an AE, if you're anyone go to market marketing, honestly, outside of go to market too. I know a couple of people in insurance posting a lot, but if you're booking a meeting, if you're generating leads, if you're doing, like you're doing something that's working, just post about it.

Even if you're doing something that's not working post about it, so nobody else does it. So I don't know. And it is weird to touch on the fact that. Some people are also like, Hey, this is my personal account. Why should I post, as an employee, it's all about what do you want at the end of the day?

I told my wife, like my goal is I never want to have to look for a job again, and if I ever started business on the side that I want to have an audience that trusts me and is familiar with me, so it helps me get a headstart. And so those are my two goals. But yeah, sorry. Yeah, we took a detour there, but I'll give it back to you.

Priyanka: No, I think that's great. For, and one solution, I wouldn't say it's a solution, but one way out to this mental block I would say is the, this, the CXOs or the founders, if it's a smaller startup, like the founders and the CXOs, they start building this. On their own, right? Like when you're like, Oh my, if my leadership is writing and if my leadership is on this, and if they're getting the results, then, Oh my God, I should also try doing that.

And it can be a teamwork, right? If you have the barrier, whether content or mental, right? They can come in and they can say, Hey, this is what I posted. Maybe you can take some inspiration from this just. Post that out, make your first post out and then I think that then it's a good journey where you're like, Oh, people are liking me and yeah, do that.

And yeah, if I speak Sri, who is our founder, he's he has come in and he's saying that with more social platforms, community, social selling would be key. And I think no one does this better than Sri. That encourages us as factors, employees to post as much as you can do as much as creative stuff you want to.

And yeah, honestly, I think that was one thing that got me out of that mental block. Priyanka, you should probably start writing. 

Troy: Yeah. Yeah. And I. You talked about the CEOs. If you're a CEO of a company, you automatically have leverage. I feel like it's so much easier to build an audience when you're a CEO because people are like, you're running a company.

You must be successful. Anybody's trying to start a company. Post on LinkedIn because yeah it's, it will be a lot easier than sitting there and just prospecting 24 hours a day, hoping that something comes in. But yeah, I feel like if CEOs of companies are perfect and if they don't have the time, hire a ghostwriter as a CEO, I'm not a big, I don't advocate for ghostwriters, but some CEOs are just like, Hey, I'm on a plane 24 hours a day and I don't know what to do and all that stuff.

Good way to, especially as a startup, good way to at least get some momentum going. 

Priyanka: Yeah. Yeah. Cool. And I think, okay, moving on to the next question is building relationships, right? Hadn't not been for LinkedIn and a post I would never have asked you on this life. Or we would be talking anyway.

Yeah. How has building relationships played? How has LinkedIn played a main part in building relationships for you? Yeah. Floor is yours. 

Troy: Yeah. Okay. I will say with the relationship part, and I'm very I'm very transparent with what my goals are, what I, through interviews and everything I'm very transparent.

And when I first started posting on LinkedIn, I could care less about relationships, to be honest. I was like, I'm going to build a following, and I'm going to monetize it, and I'm going to make a lot of money. That was literally what I was thinking when I started posting. But then, Recently, not two or three months ago, it hit me that I was like talking to founders and I wanted to start interviewing founders and not about how they built their company, but like very specific things about what they're doing.

I was just reaching out to the people that I've built relationships with through the nine months of posting. And I had 25 founders that were like, yeah, let's chat. Always happy to chat with you. And many of these I can text right now or give a call to, and they're just willing to chat.

Actually. I texted one last night and said, Hey, can I get your advice? Just because I'm always trying to learn, so many different new things. But so when I was looking at it, I was like, Whoa, not only do I have all of this leadership, like all these leadership connections and, marketing and in sales, because I've been posting that persona for a while, but I also have all these founders in my corner as well, that.

Just would be there to help me with whatever I need. So I will say right now, the way it's helped me with relationships, like obviously we're on this live because of LinkedIn. So that's one thing. But there's that I've helped a lot of people just go to market with their ideas and their business ideas.

And they're like bootstrapping startups. I think that stage is so fun, helping companies and friends go from zero customers to five to 10. That's such a fun stage. But yeah, I'm friends with a lot of founders now, which is really interesting because at the end of the day, I do want to create my own business and having that network will be, I know it'll pay off down the road.

But also I went to lunch last Friday with a president of a company here in your local to Raleigh. And next thing, he's got these connections that are, were the earliest investors in Google and Apple and Amazon. And now we're talking bigger picture things about, go to market and stuff. I was texting him the other night and I was just.

Thinking like this came from LinkedIn. I we're sitting here talking about go to market strategies, and he's been doing this for so many years and, it was connected with the biggest wigs of tech. So I feel, it's transformed like the way I live and that I will live, I feel like I think in five years down the road, my life will look completely different than if I never posted at all.

And yeah, it just, I always like I said about the prospecting thing, I always try to give first whatever that is. And that's why I post. Literally every single thing that I do throughout my sales journey on LinkedIn to make sure that people can resonate with it and people can take it away and go apply it to themselves.

And then I got a LinkedIn message last night where a person was like, Hey, I followed your whiteboard. I followed your whiteboard posts, whatever the post was, and it booked in the. The CSO, he also targets cyber security. So the CSO called me within minutes and wanted to chat about how we can help him.

Like that stuff's amazing. Like I now have a relationship with that person cause I was able to help him. And I didn't even know until he reached out to me and said that it works. Yeah, it's, I think it's going to be life changing and in the upcoming years. 

Priyanka: Yeah, I think, oh that's really.

Like this is what people say in like Oscar Awards or something like this has been life changing for me. And and it's good to know that it has been so impactful for you. I think in general You might not be really good friends or haven't, if you have some 5, 000 followers, that doesn't mean you didn't touch with all 5, 000 of them, but those five or even 50 do who regularly like your posts or comment or share or watch your lives, events, whatever, right?

Those do form a strong foundation or a network for you to go ahead with the other 50 that you will build within your follower journey, right? And I don't like to call don't this follower because I think it's a bit like it's not something that I want to call my friends. Yeah. It's weird.

It's weird to call followers, but even like those connections that you form they do add a lot of value than you would have imagined. So when I started writing I, I was not, I was, I thought that. I'll write, right? And I'll get some engagement. I never thought from a perspective that, Oh, I can learn as well.

I never thought it that way. It, whether it was like my because I was not exposed to that environment previously. Or it's just like how things work and you're like a bit self centered when it comes to starting up things. But what it has done is yeah, I obviously write and stuff, but what I've learned over the years, not over the years, maybe from whenever I started writing is the relationship is like one part.

And what you get out of that relationship in terms of learning is. Is immense and I never thought that, I'll get to that sort of a level. 

Troy: Yeah it is. And I feel like people, they don't believe it. They almost maybe that's another reason they don't post is they don't really think anything will.

I was actually that person, which is why I didn't really post anything more than company updates. I was like, there's no way if I post on LinkedIn, I can go start meeting founders of multi billion dollar companies and stuff. Like the next thing, nine, 12 months later, it's, I have coffee with, the founder of Pindo, which everybody loves Pindo and things like that.

And it's really interesting. And that even actually just came from that started from LinkedIn, like just. Having this vision of what I want so LinkedIn Cemented. My vision of what I want in the next five to 10 years. It was, Hey, I see how easy it is to get access to people. And then I also see how easy it is to just give valuable insights and typically get something in return for it.

So that was actually from an email, not even LinkedIn, however. Because of LinkedIn, I had this mindset of if I can go meet these 20 founders on LinkedIn that are building their series A, series B startups, I can go meet somebody that just, exited after they built a 3 billion company. There's no reason why they'd say no.

And so it, yeah it's a big shift. However, it's like we said in the beginning, I always try to put emphasis on this. It's taxing. It's mentally draining at times and it's, it can take a toll on you. And I like to point that out because nobody really talks about it. I would, wake up at four or 5 AM, whatever.

I'd go to the gym and at the gym in between my sets, I would, I'd be on LinkedIn commenting on people's posts and then I'd get home and I'd make breakfast. And while my breakfast is on the skillet, I'm commenting on people's posts and liking stuff. I get off work and then it's. Me, my wife and my son time, and I'm not really present.

I'm just commenting and engaging because I wanted to build an audience. So I've, I took about a two week break when that happened. Because I was like, wow I'm not present. I'm just on LinkedIn all day. When people fall in that trap, I've talked about a dozen people that have. Fallen into that trap because when you're you go get Justin Walsh's course, or you go get any of these courses of these people that sell, like how to be good on LinkedIn.

It's like engage engage, post every day, engage, engage, narrow down your niche, which you don't really need a niche. Look at Darren McKee, he's built a hundred K following with no niche. But yeah, they say all that. And it's. At the end of the day, I think that you can get away with, if you want to slowly build an audience, I think you can get away with 30, 30 minutes a day of engagement and then make a post.

But on the AE side, it's 100%. I would, I don't know why people wouldn't use LinkedIn to book more meetings and close more deals. It's way easier than email and cold calling, so I don't know why they wouldn't. 

Priyanka: Yeah that's right. That's right. One last question and for the audience, if you have any questions, thoughts that you want to share with us do put it on the comments.

We will take it up after this last question. Yeah. So my last question is how has social selling helped you In your personal journey, right? Not relationships, no AE revenue, sales, pipeline, closed stuff, but just personally, 

Troy: yeah. So I can start from some past things. When I was at MongoDB, I built a services business.

I'm very big in like trying to build things and things like that. Everybody who's talked to me knows it. I built a services business when I was at MongoDB. There was three things that I did to book meetings that were out of the norm. So I use zoom desktop to end up booking meetings. I was using a lot of video and this was four or five years ago when video was still making its way into the market.

And then I was using LinkedIn, but I had a very specific workflow on LinkedIn from 8am to 10am every morning that I would do in a booking me three to four meetings a week. Anyways, what I did was I was like. I thought to myself, wow, these are breaking into accounts where people are struggling, breaking into accounts.

I wonder if I can take this information, like a course bundle, bundle it up and then go go sell it. And so next thing, I'm having. Five meetings a week while I have a full time job because people want to learn how I'm breaking into accounts more. So personally, knowing that I can go out and build a business and literally only rely on LinkedIn, that's huge.

That's one thing. The second thing feeds off what I just talked about. And that's knowing that in the next few years, personally, the LinkedIn, like I'm going to stay consistent on LinkedIn for as long as I. As I have the capacity to, and I know that it's only going to get bigger. It's only going to get better.

And so personally, I believe that yeah, I believe that I would be in a spot in three years that will be way further than what I could have ever dreamed of because of LinkedIn. And then also. It's so awesome for me when people reach out to me. So I, last week I posted about, Hey, I have 15 minutes to spare next week.

If you're a sales rep, reach out to me, I'll book, we'll try to break into accounts together and things like that. And I had a dozen people reach out and I booked all 12 spots over the next two to three weeks because I want to help people. So now I get to make friends too. So that's look, we're here because of it.

And so that's, I think that's how it's helped me personally. And yeah, and I'll report back. We'll jump on a live in three years and I'll let you know where I'm at to see if that actually does change. 

Priyanka: No why wait for three years? We'll do a live in another six months, maybe in December before we go to the next year.

Yeah, now that I've said this it just struck my mind that 2023 is halfway over. It's pretty hard to register. But yeah. Anyway, but, one more thing, right? Like when you, so when we spoke about, there was like no plan for you to build relationship, make friends. You just wanted that pipeline on your CRM that, Hey this is contact try and all of that.

Too bad LinkedIn doesn't monetize, but but I think LinkedIn should start monetizing. That's like one. Thought that I had in my mind that as a platform, if you're encouraging creators, then why not pay them? Yeah, 

Troy: honestly I don't know what goes on behind the scenes of the bigger names.

I wouldn't be shocked if LinkedIn monetized people like like Justin Welch or something like that. I don't know. He, he just dropped, he's got what, 400, 000 followers. There's people read, I can't remember his last name. He's got like 2. 4 million followers on LinkedIn. Maybe they don't write, maybe there's just zero monetization.

But speaking of that, another way that. That companies could have their employees post on LinkedIn is incentivize them to like there's what's his name? I think his name is Andrew Melbourne. Can't remember the exact name, but he talks a lot about this creating a plan or a structure of being able to incentivize people to post on LinkedIn to, to build and drive more demand.

Which could be a way to do that as well. But yeah, it would be cool if LinkedIn did let you monetize like anybody monetize, there's ways around it. You build your newsletter. You they did allow you now to this isn't too new, but you have the little link in your profile where it can take it, take them off to a different website and monetize it.

But as soon as you redirect somebody from the site, they're on, you're automatically dropping like 85 percent of traffic. 

Priyanka: Yeah, I think people do that, like they externally monetize their services, all of that, which is good. But I think even if LinkedIn starts monetizing their creators and whatever, I think they've started thought leader ads where.

Anybody can promote your, but that's totally different. It's not for the creator. It's company. Yeah I was thinking in terms of having a really low barrier, like YouTube recently made its barrier. If you have 500 subscribers. You can monetize. Oh, wow. Yeah. And 500 subscribers is not really high.

Maybe something like that, if LinkedIn starts doing it, I think it'll really go huge as a creator platform. That's my my thinking. But yeah, thanks. Thanks for this Troy. Yeah. Any last comments that you want to make? Any warnings about LinkedIn can consume you?

You might scroll to your phone during your family time. 

Troy: No, I think I've scared people enough on that. What I will say is because I'm sure that there is a fair amount of account executives and probably marketers that are listening in on this. One thing that I'm really, a few things that I'm really strict on.

One, I never include a message with any connection request that I send out on LinkedIn, ever. I will never include a message. As soon as you do that, you're just, you look like you're about to sell them. That's one thing. People might feel differently, that's fine, that's okay. But for me, I've had, I have the highest conversion rate if I don't include a message.

The second thing is when you are social selling and you are doing things like that, there's a few things I recommend. And especially if you have LinkedIn sales navigator, if you have LinkedIn sales navigator, save your leads, all these people that you're connecting with, save them. And then on the homepage, you'll be able to see every time that they post comment on their posts.

Don't doesn't matter. If they're hiring, just, Hey, I love to see the growth at the company. Congratulations. I'll let you know if I find anybody, something like that. Again, I was looking at some of the comments here. It's the give to get approach. Just constantly give people or give to people on LinkedIn, especially when they're in your ICP and you're trying to sell them, I'd say that's another thing.

A third thing is nobody cares about your product. Literally, I don't care who you're selling to, they don't care about your product because there's thousands of or hundreds of other people that are reaching out with a product that one can be similar to yours or two you're competing with the budget because it does something different, but it still comes from a marketing budget or sales budget or security budget and that they don't care, like literally zero people care about your product.

And it's harsh to say, but it's true. But what they do care about is what the value can be from your product. So when you are messaging people on LinkedIn, don't there's no reason to say my product can do this, and that, but they're tell a story with it. Who did it do it for and share what their, share what their results were and their success was.

And I think about this a lot more than I should. I was thinking about this last night when I was in bed that like factors, you don't have a handful of companies that compete with you directly or somewhat compete with you. But to be honest, like if you look at a metadata IO or a clear bit, or if you look at even things outside of that, like a mutiny, you're still competing with the budget that they're selling for.

And so it's nobody cares about your product. And that all comes back to making your message very clear what I said in the beginning and because my vocab sucks, I can't use big words anyways. So when I realized that I was pitching product, Hey, my product can do this and that and we'll help you with this.

No, if you can paint the picture for them and share the value of what more so write it as if you're in their shoes, right? If you were to get that email. How would you want your life to be impacted? And if you were, if somebody wrote an email to you to sell you and said, Hey, my product does this, your life wouldn't be impacted.

But if you were like, Hey, Troy up the road ended up running a three minute mile because he did these three things and you want to run a three minute mile, chances are, it's going to, it's, and that's probably impossible by the way, but chances are, it's going to resonate more. So know that every sales rep should know that nobody cares about your product at all.

Priyanka: Yeah, I think sometimes I think. My audience doesn't even care about me a lot. Yeah, that's, yeah. That's because if I write hey, this is practice. This is how we do funnel analytics. They'll be like, okay. And what do we do of this information? But if I write something like, oh, if you want to see how a prospect has gone from this stage to this stage you can't do that in X.

Software, but you can do that in factors. Yep. And there's a, there's an instant interest in this, right? Oh, you can solve my problem, like , that doesn't matter if it's true Factors or any other tool but you can solve my problem. This is the problem and this is the solution. Yeah, I think that, that worked for us.

We, we, at least I. Got to this realization a little bit later, but yeah, I think your audience cares about how much value you, you give them and coincidentally, if your software solves for it, then great. Not be the other way around and be like selling. And this, I think this also applies to sales emails, like you propose the solution for a problem and not your product.

Yeah, 

Troy: exactly. Why would you, there's no reason. Tell anybody about your product. If you don't know what, what their problem is, it's funny. I have this really, I have this take that's controversial, but not really, but I really do believe prospecting is just marketing at the end of the day 

And I think that the second that A sales rep throws somebody in a sequence.

It's crazy. Like I think of outreach and sales off, they essentially just took MailChimp and SendGrid and all these tools and said, Hey, we're for sales though. And it's all marketing. It's all marketing. So there's that develop. If you are going to be social selling, especially on LinkedIn, comment on all of their posts, tag them in posts that you think that they'd be really interested in, which is what I do a lot.

And then when you're messaging them, don't do a call to action, the first message you can do it the third, fourth message, but give them something. All right. Just say, here's how this company did this or whatever might be, or, Hey, I always just say, Hey, do you mind if I share some helpful, like I said earlier, like some helpful.

News or some threats that we're seeing, things like that. Or I'll just say, do you mind if I share any sort of blogs and the cyber security industry that I might, that you might find, useful. I do that kind of stuff. And usually people are, it's free information. Usually people say yes to that.

It's better than you'll get a higher conversion rate over time. Just takes a little bit longer, but I think those are like I think those are my last words and just be a familiar face. That's key. Be a familiar face. If you are, people trust you. It's just psychological. I don't know the science behind it.

But if people see you a lot, they start trusting you. It's like influencers. That's 

Priyanka: true. Yeah. Yeah. One more thing I just, I want to add is that. So like I said, we get almost like 30 percent of our, I think it's more, I'm not really sure about the exact numbers. Yeah. 30 percent of our traffic from organic social or LinkedIn.

And we as a practice have made this compulsory for our, whoever is doing the demo call to ask that, where did you find us? Like we anyway have the. Dropdown, but we still want to hear good things about us. We asked the prospect on call and they said that, oh, I came across some post, this post or some post from someone.

Yeah. But they do remember what the post was about. Like they do. Oh, so this was the post and this was the problem that your post was talking about? , this was the value. I don't remember who it was or where it was, but. This is the this is why I have come to you and not because of, a person but I obviously follow them or see them, but I don't remember who is the person.

So that, that's why I said that they don't care about your product or you. Yeah. Yeah. Problem and the value that, that you might propose. So yeah, that's mostly it. And we've been on for more than 45 minutes. I thought I'd wrap it up in 30, but it's good when engaging conversations happen that to live.

So yeah, 

Troy: it is, I know it's a lot different when you're when you're live and it's not edited out or anything. Yeah. 

Priyanka: I think again, that was one barrier in my brain. I had to come out like, Oh I have to go yeah. So yeah, but it's great. It was great having you try and one of the greatest conversations I had my topic of interest again, something that I think I do.

A little well, yeah, I think that it's great talking to you and hope to see you soon on a live again. 

Troy: Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for having me. It was really fun. 

Priyanka: Thank you guys for joining us. I'll see you soon on the next thing. Bye.