Social Selling on LinkedIn with Patrick Simone

Social Selling Corporate Trainer, Author, and Speaker, Patrick Simone, shares what social selling is and practical tips to get started yourself and for your team on LinkedIn to make more connections and sales. 

Connect with Patrick:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricksimone/
Salesification: https://a.co/d/befoSjm
Website: https://info.adessodigital.ch/linkedin-optin

Transcript

 Britta Blanski  00:09

Welcome to the LinkedIn Lounge podcast, a space where we dive deep into questions surrounding culture, community, employee engagement, employee experience and what it looks like to help be an active voice to improve our workplaces. Linkedin is an amazing place of connection and opportunity, so when you're willing to dive into that space and be a little bit vulnerable and lean into your authentic, genuine side when it comes to relationship building, you'll be surprised at what you find. So grab those earbuds, find a quiet space, and enjoy this conversation. Welcome to the LinkedIn Lounge podcast today I have with us Patrick Simone. He is the founder and owner of a Deso digital sales and marketing while being a LinkedIn trainer and social selling coach and he's written the book Salesification, which will give you a dive into social selling and give you practical, tangible tips so welcome Patrick i'm so happy that you're here today. 
 

Patrick Simone  00:00

Hello, Britta. Thank you very much hello, everyone thank you very much for the invitation it's a great pleasure for me to be here and I'm looking forward to a great conversation. 
 
Britta Blanski  01:29

Yeah so my first question, and maybe for our listeners as well, is what is social selling and what is salesification? 
 

Patrick Simone  01:39

Well, social selling, you know, there are different interpretations, let's say, on LinkedIn, not only on LinkedIn, but in general floating around with salespeople. Salespeople like to see it as just an additional sales channel and sales tool. And that's why the word social selling is basically, you know, people think it's just about selling, but actually it has almost nothing to do with selling. It supports sales. It helps you to sell, yes, but it's all about social it's all about being social. So officially it's leveraging the power of social media to, you know, to network, to grow trust with your audience. And this trust, this those relationship will eventually lead to to to save to sales. For me, the most important part is to focus on social. So it's really what it is it's leveraging the power of social media to build trust and relationships and it's basically, in a nutshell, networking powered by technology. 
 
 

Britta Blanski  02:56

I love that when do you or when would you say i don't know if you can put an exact date on it, but when was social media starting to be used and implemented as a tool for businesses apart from maybe like B to C? So I think back from my own social media experience, I definitely wasn't expecting to see businesses and organizations on there and I feel like first there was product and then now it's really like I know you and I talk about the importance of getting your people online visible under the name of the company so when in your opinion or maybe if you know if you can put a date on it like when did we start to see this transformation of social media, not just being for friends and family? 
 

Patrick Simone  03:39

Yeah, well, I I started to see this transformations already many years ago when I was still a sales manager in in the corporate world. I I worked for over 20 years in the corporate world and in my in my role as sales and marketing leader I was always let's say open and keen to learn about new strategies to to improve and branding and improve as well the sales process and and you know I've been on LinkedIn for more than now 12 or 13 years even but I have always been using LinkedIn as a tool for you know let's say or I fought in case one day I will look for a job. You know at least I have a profile which looks OK and you know and maybe some recruiters will will find me and and offer me a good job. Luckily I was never in a situation to find a job and and so I by coincidence I learned about this term social selling and I started to look into it i was already very interested in the whole online and digital marketing, let's say space, because you know things happen to me like to all of us you know I was looking for a hotel in in Paris at the back that time and and then you know like one day later I got an email with like hey, we have today the best rates for you know, for hotels in Paris. And then I was always interested to learn how can this, how can this work how can this be possible how can I be on Facebook? And then I get an advertisement for a hotel or a restaurant in Paris. How can this work how, how does this work? I was always keen to learn this. You know what is happening behind the scenes And with that let's say interest. You know I got into the social selling and it was actually back in 2017 about when I heard about it the first time and I started let's say learning about what is social selling in general then I started to look into how how can you do social selling on LinkedIn. And so in, yeah, and about end 2017 I started really understanding that there is a massive opportunity also in B to B, not only B to C, but in B to B to leverage social media, but in particular in B to B LinkedIn. So I don't know if this is like an official date for me it was, it's like the start of a new area. So I would say around 2017 but probably it started before that. 
 
 

Britta Blanski  06:24

Yeah well, and I know from your own personal story, which I'd love if you would share it again too for our listeners but you know, when you were sharing on LinkedIn, it was pretty avant-garde like you were one of the only people doing it and so you were really ahead of the wave that we're seeing now of people starting to utilize the platform. So would you be willing to share a little bit about, you know, your experience of not just having the profile and not just hoping that a recruiter would land, you know, upon and maybe offer you an interview, but you were in a very specific role and you were like, OK, no, I'm going to intentionally share and then you saw really exciting results from that. 
 
 

Patrick Simone  06:59

Yeah, yeah, sure with pleasure i mean, I said it was about in 2017 when I first started learning about this term, social selling. Personally and from a private perspective i've never been a heavy social media user. You know, I have the classical like Facebook, Instagram profiles, but I never really used them except on the time when I was living abroad i lived a couple of years of years in in Africa and that was a good, a good way to be connected with my family and see what is going on going on back home. But other than that, I was never really a heavy social media user but I realized that there is like a huge potential for for for my company, for my team and for business in general. So I started to learn about social selling i did like A and online training and online course, you know, and I think classically how to improve your profile, how to find customers, how to connect with customers and fun enough. Linkedin has dramatically changed the last years, but the fundamentals have remained the same because at the end we're talking about people. Long story short, I learned about how to how to, you know, use and leverage LinkedIn. And I started landing like really big opportunities and with simple approaches like, you know, we're staying in touch with people I knew on LinkedIn and then sending DMS. Like today everybody's preaching send DMS i mean at the end you send a message is whether you send it on LinkedIn, on email or you call or you send WhatsApp, whatever it is, it's about connecting with people, staying in touch with people you know and and showing true and true interest. And that's what I did And then I realized wow the potential is is massive. I started creating big opportunities for our business and then I thought OK, if I can do that i had a team at that time we were about 15 people. So I thought hey, if I can do that if I would show my team how to do it and we were 15 people you know, then we can like basically explode our sales pipeline and and and and and our growth and that's what we did we I started training my my people, my team on how to transform their profiles, how to find contacts on LinkedIn, how to find potential customers, how to connect with them, etcetera, etcetera. And and then at the same time I had a luck that I was responsible as well for the marketing side. So I created a company page for our country organization and through the growing of this company page I learned a lot about content creation. So we did content creation at this we started with one post per week and then we did like the daily posts on the company page. So I learned content creation. I learned the, let's say, the sales part, networking part of LinkedIn and that made us very, very visible at that time in Switzerland on the Swiss market, we were like very visible, very known and we were very successful and we transformed and we became the most successful sales team in the entire company organization we were more than 15.000 thousand people worldwide at that time. And we were measured on return on sales investment, the most successful sales team. And that's when we got the attention from the corporate guys saying, hey guys, what are you doing, Patrick what are you doing what you know, what are you doing differently than everybody else and then I said it's social selling i'm leveraging LinkedIn and then they gave me basically 30 minutes in a global sales leader meeting to basically present our strategy so I had 30 minutes to talk about social selling. This was in 2019 and this is actually when I had the opportunity to for the first time to talk in front of a larger audience about back at the still today my preferred topic, social selling and LinkedIn. And this is when I also realized that that our team and our organization, we were like one, probably two or three steps ahead because everybody was looking at me like big eyes, like what is this guy talking about. So this was the start of my social selling, let's say career. 
 

Britta Blanski  11:44

Yeah, well, and that's perfect too, 'cause I'm kind of thinking, what would be some of the objections that people have running through their head right now so maybe they're like, yeah, I don't like social media either like, I don't have Instagram, I don't have Facebook and now you're asking me to utilize Linkedin's like, what is, you know, what if someone's sitting here being like, what does that mean do I need to become like a massive influencer and be creating content every single day or you said DMS are important, I need to be sending 100 cold outreach message, outreach messages and it's just moved from, you know, email or the phone to now utilizing LinkedIn. What if someone's like, yeah, I simply don't like Crunch, you know, I don't like social media and I don't want to have to be doing a ton of outreach what would your response be to that? 

Patrick Simone  12:29

Well, that's a great question. You know for me at the end of the day there are so many different strategies in terms of social selling on how you can be successful and if you scroll now through your feed, you will find at least 10 different ways of you know, one is selling telling you send 100 DMS, the other one is saying you know do an automation which by the way is forbidden so I don't recommend that just for for to be clear. And somebody else again is saying you have to post once a day or twice a day even or you have to send whatever or create 20 or 30 or 50 comments every day. You know there are different strategies. For me, the most important part is that you understand for somebody's just starting to understand what are you know, how does LinkedIn work? How does the algorithm work how do the people behave on LinkedIn what are they looking for that you understand what is your target audience looking for what are their their their pain points what do they need how can you help them? And then for me it's it all starts with the profile you need to have it. In my opinion, either you have a great profile or no profile at all. Because if you have a bad profile you just leave a very bad first impression whether you are active or not, your profile is visible. So for me everything starts with a great profile and this is also how I'd start usually my trainings is by optimizing the profile. In order to optimize the profile you need to know what are your strengths, what is your expertise, How do you want to position in this network do you want to position as whatever sales manager, as an expert in XYZ, as a coach, as a trainer, as what you name it, or And on top you need to know who you want to reach because you need to basically talk the same language. So knowing what is your strength, how you want to position and and knowing who do you want to talk to, who do you want to reach, do you want to and what are your goals do you want to just network a bit, just for fun, a bit like Facebook for for business or are you really, really looking to, you know, to improve your brand? Are you looking to win customers you know, it's different aspirations, this for different goals and that's how you basically set up your profile and whatever it is, there is no right and wrong but for me the first step is to really have an optimized profile and then and then I, I always, you know, recommend and then it's up to you on to leverage also your own strengths if you are a good writer as an example or a good content creator in general and you're not afraid of sharing your voice, which I always recommend to do, share your stories, share your base, basically your your voice, you know, then I recommend to to do it, you know, and start slow start with a little step like, I don't know, like once one post per week, then you increase to two posts per week, then maybe to three if you want, you know, this is how I started you know, the 1^st post, I remember I was like sweating i was like Oh no, my God, you know, I felt like I would like stand just completely naked on a, on a, on a big on a big stage, you know, in in front of 50.000 thousand people. But then what happened actually nothing and that's, you know, I think people need to do step by step. If you don't like posting and you are working for a corporate, for a for a big brand or for a corporate, then it's a easy way is to for example to share the content which the company is is putting at a disposal, for example there's nothing wrong with that. It's not the best content strategy, but it can work too. If you like to talk with people, then connect with people and engage with people and send the DM you don't have to send 50 DMS just like to to random people, but you can connect with people you know. You can send them a message, you know there are so many, let's say opportunities to engage with people it can be through a post it can be even in the network, you see who is celebrating something or birthday or whatever it is. So you can, you can basically leverage your own strengths and then, you know, drive it up or not to what you are looking for. What I don't like to hear to be honest with you is when people tell me LinkedIn is not working for me and then, you know, if you drill a little bit more into the details and say, OK, but what have you been doing said, yeah, I sent 5 connection requests, but you know, nobody my customers, they don't they don't respond to me and say, OK, maybe you know, you need to send more or maybe you need to, you know, find other people who will respond to your connection requests, etcetera same with content creation. I don't get any reactions well, probably you know you need to improve your way your your writing or your content or maybe you need to have a larger network or maybe you know you need to post content on a more regular base so it really depends so my advice really is leverage. Do whatever feels good for you and then leverage this you know and improve step by step. 
 
 

Britta Blanski  18:00

Yeah, we can just backtrack a moment. If someone's wondering if they're like, Oh well, I think my profile is optimized, but maybe it's not. Could you give an example of what, like, a mediocre to bad profile would look like, 'cause I think we can say, you know, like have a captivating headline or, yeah, like share your strengths and maybe someone's like, well, I don't know, like, I think I am, but maybe I'm not. And then obviously there's profiles that don't have anything like clearly, like have a photo, right? Or like have an about section so what maybe just like two or three things that someone could be like, OK, can I tick the box on this? Like what would be in a mediocre profile that needs optimization? 
 
  

Patrick Simone  18:41

Absolutely i mean definitely, as I mentioned before, it really depends on what is your goal on LinkedIn, What are you looking for are you looking for a job? Are you looking for customers are you looking to build your personal brand? It's like different different goals which you can have and based on that you build up your profile. In general I can say that the most important is to have a complete profile, and complete for me starts from top to the end. Ideally your profile is telling a story, not just one story is telling your story your professional story. No need you know people are afraid i don't want to share some private stuff you don't have to share private stuff. You can give some nuances of you know of of your private life like for example, what are your hobbies or you know, I don't know, I'm passionate. Whatever cross feature or whatever it is, you can add this, you know, to make it more personal. But the most important important is to tell your professional story and it starts at the top and the ends at the at the very bottom, the top. The first thing people see is the banner. The background picture, the banner and the banner for me is one of the most underutilized profile sections ever because that's the first thing people see when they click on your profile. Now there are different strategies, if you have your own business or you can create a a a great one on Canva or if you work for a corporate sometimes they put they give you some some examples or some drafts which you can use. But in any case, having a banner and a great banner which reflects as well your your personal brand and reflects as well maybe even the corporate brand you know already is a big, big step which makes your profile look. More professional. The second is the picture of course having no picture, Having a picture, having a good picture. You know, just today I I reviewed the profile of a person having a picture with a with a beer glass in front you know is this really the personal brand the professional brand you want to be known for on this massive and largest Business Network in the world, question mark. So that these are the the little things so I always recommend to have just a headshot. You know just position yourself and imagine you're going to visit the customers whatever it is that's how you want to be seen on on on LinkedIn and it it doesn't mean that it has to be too professional because professional is good, but it also has to be authentic. I always give the the the example of a fitness coach for example, obviously a fitness coach, even if it's a business, social media network, a fitness coach would not probably have a profile picture with a suit and tie as an example, probably would have just with his, you know, training outfit as an example. So I always say, hey, profile picture professional but authentic. And then it goes on and on with each profile section, the headline, of course, you know there are different strategies there as well. Job title or a value proposition or whatever you, you name it that that would take probably another hour to talk about it. But most important for me is to complete all profile sections, the about me section, for example, Great way to tell your own stories in your own story in your own words. Basically for me it's like elevate the pitch and I always give the recommendation to write it in the way that imagine you're standing, you are in an elevator with your customer and your customer is saying, hey Brita, tell me a little bit about you. And then you start telling your story in a way that is obviously relevant and and interesting for your customer if you're looking for customers, always keep in mind what is your goal. Then it goes on to the experience, which should be complete. Your education, which should be complete as well skills you know as well, should obviously be in line with reality. Here I give always a recommendation to put the most relevant skills at top. I I work as you know, I work a lot of sales people and then I see many sales people who have a top two or top three skills. Sales management or negotiation and I say, look, that's great that you're good at sales management and negotiation but if I'm a customer, you know, I don't want to know that you're a good negotiator actually, I want to know that you are an expert in whatever you're trying to sell me. That's what I, you know, that's what I want to see and that's why I recommend to put that first to the top and last but not least recommendations. Many people underestimate this as well but having a recommendations of your on your on your profile is a is is increasing and improving your credibility. Always look at your profile from a perspective of a person who doesn't know you and lands on your profile and starts at the top and gets intrigued by you, by your banner, by your headline, whatever scrolls down and learns more and more about you and gets more interest for you and then arrives to the bottom and sees two three four five twenty thirty whatever it is recommendations of other people confirming basically what that that you are, you know, an expert in whatever you are or a leader in whatever you are. This is like, this is actually, this is like next level because this is when other people are telling that you're good. It has much more credibility and much more impact and when we say about ourselves, you know how good we are because that's everybody can do that. So in a nutshell, top to bottom, you need to have kind of a storyline, you need to tell you have your storyline, you need to build, you need to look professional, but at the same time authentic, very important, don't create a, you know, an online personality which doesn't exist. So it needs to match and correspond the real you, your authentic you and you want to to build a credibility so that people when you contact them or when they contact you already they have a kind of a level of trust and say hey K this seems to be a a good person or an expert in whatever he or she is doing. 
 
 

Britta Blanski  25:20

Yeah, it's so fascinating how I think often times we've associated professionalism, meaning that you you share less information. So I think there is this common misunderstanding that if you have a LinkedIn profile and maybe you have like the basics, so your photo, a headline that just has your job title, and then a very short about section that just covers the responsibilities that you have, you think it almost makes you more legitimate because you're gatekeeping it's like you're letting solely the title do all the speaking for you in a way that must be like, oh, I must be important because my title says it all when it's like actually, no, you're it's doing the opposite effect and I think it just takes a lot of people this it's a self not, it's not like self discovery, but it's a growth journey of being like it's OK to give more information and coming for your mere perspective, right like you don't want us to discover everything after you've already taken 10 steps to have a conversation or meet you know it's like the more you can know up front, the easier and more beneficial it is for everyone, for you, and then for anyone who's trying to contact you. 
 
 

Patrick Simone  26:33

Absolutely I can. I can only confirm that and what is important is that at in the end of the day you need to feel well with your own profile, OK i that's why when I when I work with with with with my customers, I never kind of forced them to do this or that and say hey you need to do this. It's a recommendation. I recommend you to do this or maybe you want to consider that because at the end it's your profile and you are the only one who decides how you want a position on on LinkedIn. Also for people working in corporates, by the way, many times, and I'm the first one advocating, and I mean we had this discussion already before or this conversation before, advocating that people and employees should be more visible on LinkedIn. But at the end of the day, we can't, we we should not forget that an employee profile is and remains an employee's profile so nobody can tell you have to pose, so you have to do that. We can encourage them to do that we can encourage them to improve the profile we can show them how to improve the profile. And usually most people are very open to that but we can't force them and and that's very important and same with the profile optimization, whether you're incorporate or you're a solopreneur or you know whatever, at the end you need to feel well with the if you look at the profile, OK, this is me and if somebody doesn't know you or sorry people who know you and they look at your profile, they should get this feeling saying hey this is exactly how he or she is this is exactly the person I know also in in if you can say in real life. 
 
 

Britta Blanski  28:17

Yeah, that's good no, I like asking that question is, you know, if someone else looked at it too, would they recognize you, you know, if they like, compared your Facebook not that obviously it's not Facebook, but you know your friend from Facebook if they looked at your LinkedIn, would they say, yeah, this is the same person like I see Britta in both of these it's it's just a good way to, you know, calibrate and ask yourself is it in line with who you are? And it's a perfect segue because I wanted to ask so you said that you have started utilizing LinkedIn to do social selling with your sales team. So, and apart from being a business owner or wanting to build your personal brand, who is LinkedIn for? Like who should be utilizing it? 
 
 

Patrick Simone  28:56

That's a good question. I would, I mean in my, in my opinion, you know anyone, anyone who wants to let's say leverage relationships and a Business Network for for business growth, OK. Now this can be from, you know, from a solopreneur to to a big corporate company this can, this can include everyone because a Business Network in the end of the day, you know, is for me a long term investment. It doesn't matter whether I'm looking for customers, whether I just want to, you know, grow and and and or maintain or grow, you know, a network of people which which you know, which somehow have something to do with me in business or whether I want to, you know, improve my branding. At the end of the day, it's all people related. And I mean we know it from from the off, you know, from in person events i mean talking with people, exchanging with people, knowing people, you know, having the right contacts can be very, very helpful in the right moment you know, doing a call, hey, I know somebody in that company, let me call him, maybe he can help you or you know, this is very, very helpful i mean, you live in live in Italy, excuse me, you live in Italy there I'm Italian so I can say that I know there is very important to know the right people have the right contacts in, in the, in, in basically in everyday. And so for me, it's LinkedIn is for everyone who wants to have a solid Business Network with real people. And then one way or the other, one day, this Business Network can help you to achieve different things in businesses can be, you know, sales growth or, you know, if you have to find a job, you're looking for a job or whatever. So for me, it's really for anyone who wants to leverage business contacts. Yeah, in a business context, let's put it that way. 
 
 

Britta Blanski  31:19

Yeah it's funny that you said that because often times when I do, I was just thinking when you had mentioned, you know, your about section is like your elevator pitch, right so when you meet someone, what do you tell them the first time i'm thinking of all the times I've told people here locally what I do and they're it's always like a pause of like, oh, LinkedIn. Oh yeah and then they say, but it's all about who you know, right it just goes back to, I don't know if that's a culture thing i don't know if you found that as well if there really is, if we're in this, you know, unique moment right now where people are, you know, really understanding that LinkedIn, yes, it is connections but it's also like a springboard to be able to have those in person connection as well you know it doesn't just stay and only is housed on the platform, but there is just culturally this it's eye opening, you know and when you try to explain, yeah I know like LinkedIn it makes a difference and it's a great way to meet people and connect and do business and it yeah, it does come down to who do you know, but don't limit yourself just by that tangible local in person presence. 
 
 

Patrick Simone  32:24

Yeah, absolutely i mean I can only, I can 100 % confirm that in the end and I think I'm the living example of that it's like you know, I'm very active on LinkedIn as you know, I post every day, I engage every day etcetera, etcetera, yes, but I do many, many things which you don't see on LinkedIn in a sense that I meet a lot of people offline i love to see people, I love to go to you know, fairs, events, networking events etcetera. So in the end, it's like you combine this offline and online and you know, so often I get requests from potential customers. You know, you can call them leads or whatever it is, you know, from people I met somewhere sometime, you know, in the in the offline event, then I connect to LinkedIn and then, you know, sometimes, you know, I don't. Sometimes you, you have like you engage, you have a kind of a conversation on LinkedIn and sometimes you have just zero nothing for whatever reason, it doesn't matter but then suddenly they fall from the sky but actually they don't fall from the sky because there is a reason you're connected. And when you are visible people remember you because you're on top of their mind whenever they need you're the services you are you're providing and and that's where you have the perfect combination of online and offline because then they reach out to you then this is the you know these are the best inbound leads. If you want to call them leads where they come to you with a specific request, they are ready to buy and they come to you because they trust you, because they have some are, you know they are you are on their radar and you know the probability that to close such a business in my experience is around 70 % and and you know opposed to reaching out to people on outbound and this is very, very powerful. 
 
 

Britta Blanski  34:21

Yeah, it's fantastic so Patrick, if someone liked what they heard today, how can they reach you how can they contact with you? How can they contact you in what other ways could they work with you as well? 
 
 

Patrick Simone  34:33

Well the easiest way to contact me obviously is LinkedIn so you can find me on on LinkedIn Patrick CK and then Simone SIMONE you can find me and you can follow me, you can connect with me whatever you prefer so and there you can find also all my contact details so that's the easiest, definitely the easiest way to to find me. The the usually what I work I I have different type of customers from you know individuals or solopreneurs to corporates. Usually I show people or I I I work with people and I coach people on how to unlock the full potential of LinkedIn. Usually I do that individually or in teams and with a focus on branding and and and sales, sales and and branding. Because in the end of the day in today's time times, branding and sales are very stick stick together and very important you need to have a strong branding in order to have a more success on sales. So I work with with teams all around the world. I have different programs, I have different courses, workshops, seminars, all kind of things and I'm doing that that since four years now full time. And I have trained and coached in the meantime more than one thousand four hundred people worldwide so if anyone has you know needs help in terms of LinkedIn and social selling, I'm happy to connect and to get into a conversation. 
 
 

Britta Blanski  36:11

That's wonderful and I highly recommend everyone go and follow Patrick because he really does provide high quality content there's always something valuable, like valuable that you can learn. It's interesting, it's relatable and he's also just a great support to have in your network so thank you so much, Patrick i really appreciate your insight today. 
 
 

Patrick Simone  36:30

No problem thank you very much has been very great conversation was great, you know, talking about LinkedIn and social selling. And see you soon.