“I pick the people that I ask really specifically because there needs to be like a very clear, clear something that’s happening in their company or something that they tell me in our conversations that makes it worth the ask” – Sarah Brazier in today’s Tip 441
How do you prospect on LinkedIn?
Join the conversation below and learn more about Sarah!
LinkedIn Sales Stars
Sarah Brazier on LinkedIn
Sarah Brazier on Sales Success Stories Interview
Gong
Submit a Sales Tip
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. I get to point you in two really solid directions at once with this clip. This is from my most recent Sales Success Stories interview with Sarah Brazier, who is the top SDR at Gong. Here she’s talking about how she prospects on LinkedIn and she’s fully legit there as well and was part of the LinkedIn Sales Stars assets I started rolling out this week. Give a listen to the clip and then I’ll tell you a bit more at the end:
Sarah Brazier: I learned this more and more as people start hitting me up on LinkedIn. Like it’s weird, it’s kind of like I’m an SDR, but now people are prospecting me. I’d know that often it’s because people think I’m not an SDR. People think I’m something else and they did go to my page and look at the part where it says senior SDR.
They think I lead a team or one time somebody thought I was like a Director of Content, that’s what they told me. They’re like, “Hey, you’re the director of content, right? And I’m like, “No, I’m not. I’m SDR.” And I’m just an individual contributor. So what I do is if someone comments on my post or sometimes people will chat me and they’ll say, “Hey, I really enjoy your content” or they just happen to be an ICP. Usually, it’s someone that’s actually like in one of my coworker’s names, but they’re like the right person and they’re the right account, the right kind of industry. So I’ll just respond to their note or I’ll just say hi to them. I’ll say, “Hey, I appreciate you commenting on my posts. That’s actually really interesting.” And I’ll ask them an open-ended question about what they do.
And then we start talking and then I just ask them questions about them and ask, you know, it could be one time I talked to a CRO and it was just about, he manages a team in San Francisco, but he lives in Atlanta. Like why? What’s that commute like? And we just talked for like five days back and forth. And then I was like, “Hey, you know, you can totally tell me now.” I always say this. I’m like, “Hey listen, I know it’s not cool to pitch over LinkedIn so you can totally tell me, no and my feelings won’t be hurt. But I did notice these couple things are going on in your company or you write this thing about yourself on LinkedIn or you’ve been following your content. I’m just curious like would you be open to a 15-minute no-pressure conversation.” But that asked comes after we spent a lot of time chatting and building rapport and I pick the people that I ask really specifically because there needs to be like a very clear, clear something that’s happening in their company or something that they tell me in our conversations that makes it worth the ask because otherwise you’re just going to step on someone’s toes and I don’t want to do that. I want to talk to people who want to talk to me cause like that’s what we do as salespeople.
Scott Ingram: Yeah. So I’m interested specifically in kind of the patience piece because I feel like the best I get is like fake patience where somebody starts the casual conversation but about the most, they can go is like two messages and two minutes and then here comes a pitch. It’s like you know what, gosh, you need to just chill for a minute. Like two messages, two exchanges. It’s not even a whole conversation. So what do you look for? Like is it five days? Is that a magical thing? Like how have you developed this patience to just because it works if you do it but nobody does.
Sarah Brazier: Yeah, well that’s when you use like when do you ask somebody out that you just met at a bar? Well, definitely not. It’s not the first line, that’s the second line. Typically what you do, if people still do this, like if people don’t Tinder about it or Bumble or whatever. Like if you meet someone that you find interesting and you just strike up a casual conversation with them, you have an hour-long conversation at the bar or on the park bench or wherever, but you talk to them for a while and then after you’ve talked and you’ve gotten to know them, that’s when you can qualify them into should I ask this person out or not? And I think the same rule applies to sales. Like I lead the conversation into asking qualifying questions, but super casually like, “Hey, you know, I saw that your team just grew like 200% like what’s that experience like? How are you doing that?” Or I’ll say something like, “I noticed your team’s growing really, really rapidly, our team is too. What are you doing that’s working as you scale? And I genuinely am curious what other companies are doing because like our company’s growing really quickly. So I just want to compare, you know, are we like other people are not.” And I think once they’re like kind of qualified, once there’s something happening, but two lines in is not enough to get to know you at all.
Scott Ingram: You can hear my full two-hour interview with Sarah in episode 90 on the Sales Success Stories podcast, and you can read Sarah’s LinkedIn tips in the free PDF that includes 108 tips from 36 LinkedIn Sales Stars. You’ll find links to both of those things in addition to a link to Sarah’s LinkedIn profile of course at DailySales.Tips/441
Then, be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!