S1E7: Marcus Murphy: LinkedIn: The Thin Line Between “Brand Building” and “Spam”
Email is not dead. The phone is not dead. Yet, so many sales teams leave all their eggs in the LinkedIn basket. It’s the person and their content connected to the email and phone that’s broken. Although sales processes have shifted with new tools, the opportunity in understanding how to structure outreach in a way that gets people to want to engage with you in a conversation hasn’t.
Join Marcus Murphy, the CEO of The Five Percent and Board of Advisor member to LinkedIn, in a conversation around building sales teams from scratch and making the most of LinkedIn. Listen now>>
Show notes:
When you’re coming in to build a brand new sales team at a company that’s never had one, you have to understand and fall in line with the momentum they’ve already built. And you have to find a way to amplify what already works.
You’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t see the value of LinkedIn with your people and how they’re using it.
Engaged/open conversations is a great KPI for LinkedIn InMail as opposed to an automated spray and pray model. Send 20 personalized, intentional, targeted messages that are going to result in a much bigger response than 100 automated ones.
If you’ve taken yourself out of the teacher role, then you are killing your team slowly.
If you’re growing out of cash capital, then you have to home grow your talent. Take high performers in the customer support team and graduate them into an MDR, SDR, BDR type roles, working them into being a well-rounded senior account executive.
If you’re growing a team from scratch, be the first person that goes through the sales process so you create a wash and repeat process. Be mindful that if you are senior in your sales role, there are tactics you may try that are not repeatable for someone less polished and experienced.
The sales process is shifting, however there are some tools in your inside sales playbook that have remained the same such as a CRM to organize your current customers and potential. Zoom, chat, LinkedIn and some type of outreach software should be investments for your sales processes if they’re not already there.
Followup tends to be the least amount of effort and energy exercised by a sales leader, but it seems to be one of the most beneficial and crucial parts that leaders constantly overlook.
If you’re going to be a thought leader, be a thought leader in what your prospective customer cares about.
Good thought leadership focuses on answering questions for the customer and addressing pain points.
Having a personal brand is only helpful if you have built a large enough platform that you have more credibility to introduce your reps and your people to conversations that they normally would just get rejected on.
The same things that make you really competitive, and make you a successful sales leader, are also the same things that have this ability to unleash the darkness that’s in you, and you’ve got to do the work to keep that in check.
Links mentioned in this episode:
About Marcus
Marcus Murphy is a business expert who cares deeply about the flourishing and success of entrepreneurs. He previously worked for Yelp in San Francisco, going from start-up to a multi-billion dollar giant. He sits on the advisory board at Linkedin and is a sought after speaker and trainer to LinkedinLearning’s more than 22 million students.
Marcus worked at Keap as the Global Partner Development Manager where he developed and broadened new international markets throughout Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Marcus was a senior member of the executive team at DigitalMarketer and is widely known for his business partnerships with people and brands like Tony Robbins, Daymond John, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Linkedin. Marcus is a professional speaker with keynotes at conferences like INBOUND, Hypergrowth, Dreamforce, Social Media Week, ICON, Digital Sales and Marketing Day, and many more. He is also the host of Traffic and Conversion Summit and Affiliate Summit, boasting more than 20,000 attendees between them.
Marcus is currently the co-founder and CEO of The Five Percent, an international community geared toward inspiring, equipping, and facilitating actionable content for emerging entrepreneurs.
On a more personal note, Marcus is a husband to his beautiful and talented wife Gina, and their two amazing daughters Florence and Pearl.