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The Intersection of Thought Leadership and Social Selling | Mandy McEwen
Creating content and building relationships on Linkedin to promote your thought leadership.
An interview with Mandy McEwan about leveraging LinkedIn to create relationships and generate sales.
Today’s guest is Mandy McEwen, the CEO of Mod Girl Marketing, a firm that helps their clients increase brand presence and stand out from the crowd by offering innovative content marketing & social media strategies, and by leveraging the organization’s best asset – their people.
Many companies are asking employees to engage on the org’s behalf through social media, but not everyone really understands LinkedIn’s power to increase brand presence. Mandy shares common reasons people struggle to support their company through posts, likes, and comments, and why there’s a lot of social anxiety around the topic.
Mandy gives advice on ways that managers and leaders can empower their teams, methods for starting or joining appropriate conversations, and ultimately, how your workforce can generate their own content all as part of a daily routine!
Getting the most out of any social media platform will mean becoming comfortable with experimentation; employees need support and flexibility with the type of content they provide and how it’s presented. Best of all, Mandy explains why even social media “failures” can be successes in disguise – if both employees and the organization are committed to learning from mistakes.
Mandy has a great point: Every interaction can be a source of Thought Leadership content! Building content is as simple as having great conversations. You can do it, and your employees can, too!
Three Key Takeaways
- Getting started with Thought Leadership on Linkedin can be as easy as leaving meaningful comments in industry-related conversations.
- It might be tempting to use bots or direct messages to blast your Thought Leadership as broadly as possible, but be warned: Such tactics can backfire, driving people away.
- When developing teams to use Linkedin on an organization’s behalf, you have to empower them to share their ideas, coach them on how to get engaged, and give them the thoughtful support they’ll need to create great Thought Leadership content.
Join the Organizational Thought Leadership Newsletter to learn more about expanding thought leadership within your organization! This monthly newsletter is full of practical information, advice, and ideas to help you reach your organization’s thought leadership goals.
And if you need help scaling organizational thought leadership, contact Thought Leadership Leverage!
Transcript
Bill Sherman How do you empower people to build their social presence online? Well, that’s a critical issue as more and more organizations are now asking employees to maintain a social presence on platforms like LinkedIn. Today, I’m talking about the intersection of thought leadership and social selling. Joining me is Mandy McEwen. She’s the CEO of Mad Girl Marketing. Today’s conversation will be fast paced, for sure. I’m Bill Sherman. This is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Ready. Let’s begin. Welcome to the show, Mandy.
Mandy McEwen Thanks so much for having me, Bill. I’m excited to be here.
Bill Sherman So let’s dove in and I want to focus today on a conversation about really the commitment that’s needed to put content out into the world on a regular basis. And I think a lot of people struggle about that and find excuses not to do it, sort their sock drawer, you know, write another email, reschedule an appointment, whatever. Talk to me a little bit about maybe let’s start with the common excuses in terms of creating content that you’ve heard people give you, right?
Mandy McEwen Well, the first one is I’m not good at creating content. I mean, that’s like what everyone says. Like, I’m not good. I’m not good at it. My content sucks, right? That’s excuse number one that everyone has. I feel like or like, I’m not a good writer, you know, which technically you don’t have to be a good writer to post content. It’s not like then you just don’t, you know, I’m storytelling a little bit, maybe. But those are like the two common things like, I’m just not good at it. And then the third one is I don’t know what to post. Like that’s really common to is like, I have no clue what I’m supposed to be posting. So I would say those three things. I’m not a good writer. I’m not going to post content, and I have no clue what the posts are like the most common excuses I hear.
Bill Sherman Well, and where I see this then happen is if you get them over that initial hurdle and they start posting, then one of the habits that you might see is it almost becomes like someone’s personal Facebook or Instagram account where they’re taking random snapshots through the day of. Here’s an interesting thought that I had, but there’s no focus to what they’re talking about, right? And it’s just all over. It’s like, you know, the beautiful mind where there’s just little sparks of light everywhere. Right?
Mandy McEwen Yeah. Now you have a good point. So there’s like there’s all these different, you know, angles that we see people taking. And so, yeah, you do definitely want to have a little bit more focused strategic, you know, output when it comes to the content generation. But hell, if that’s what it takes to get you to post content, you know, it’s just post random things, a first go for it. Like, I came for that and then maybe hone it in, you know, and write it and once you’re comfortable. But heck, as long as you’re posting, you know, to begin with.
Bill Sherman Yeah. And so that first habit of getting online and being more than a consumer of ideas, but to make that shift to being a creator and someone who’s contributing to the conversation. One of the places that I think people undervalue a lot and I’d like to hear your point on this as well, is jumping in into conversations that are ongoing and joining the conversation and call 100 percent.
Mandy McEwen Yeah, that’s actually Bill that was actually going to be my number one curveball. That’s like if you are, you know, if you are listening to this and you fall on this category of coming up with excuses or you’re just not comfortable writing content, the easiest way is to do what Bill just said is to join conversations, start leaving comments on people’s posts and then turn those comments into your own content. It’s really super easy to do, so it’s a lot easier for our brains to go and respond to something than it is for us to come up with something brand new. That’s just the human nature, right? So if you are looking at content, you know that’s great on LinkedIn and you’re engaging and you’re part of that conversation, leave meaningful comments, you know, more than just great posts. I believe in actual legit comment that’s a little bit thought out and then copy and paste it into a document or whatever. Like, I have a content document that I just dump all my ideas and do I do too.
Bill Sherman Yeah, it’s so useful.
Mandy McEwen It’s totally it’s genius. It’s such an easy way to like, OK, all the ideas are here in one area and then we’re ready, right? Continents there, and that’s all you have to do is just leave start leaving comments every single day. I recommend five minimum meaningful comments a day, then go back at the end of the week or even three days later, and you have loads of content ideas that you do not have to come up with from scratch.
Bill Sherman And with that, there’s something that makes it a lot easier in terms of getting over that initial hurdle when you’re joining an initial conversation and you’re responding to something that’s already out there. It’s easier to jump into an existing conversation rather than to start with a blank fields. Indeed. So, what do you want to talk about right away? Hit record on the camera and building that skill of that comfort to be a conversation starter is something that you can acquire over time. Yeah, but beginning by joining a conversation, so part of that is finding it. What’s in conversations, right? So. Let’s go there for a moment. How do you find within the world of LinkedIn, which is now what, seven hundred and fifty million users or something obscene, right? Yeah, yeah. It’s in some ways the world’s largest cocktail party, which if you are not an extreme extrovert, can almost be intimidating, right? For sure. How do you find a corner of the world where you can say, Oh, these are my peeps, I can talk?
Mandy McEwen Yeah, the solid question. So. And there’s a couple of different angles here, right? So you have the sales angle where you need to be engaging with your prospects, you know, content for one, just so you’re on their radar and it’s just part of our sales process anyway for engaging, then start the relationship, right? But in terms of, you know, joining conversations and meaningful and kind of finding your peeps, if you will. I love the hashtags looking at hashtag, LinkedIn, hashtags, hashtag research, just clicking on hashtags and see what people are talking about and even just typing in words. It doesn’t even have to be a hashtag was typing in certain topics and then viewing you can. Even so, the search bar and LinkedIn school, because you can view, like most recent from the past twenty-four hours or but a time frame, right? So I use that a lot. I’ll just go in and I’ll type something in to the search bar and it’ll come up with, like, do I want to look at content only for my first degree connections? Or do I want that all content and do I want to sort this only from the last twenty-four hours, you know? So that’s what I do. I use the LinkedIn search bar and I look at and then I also have people that I follow. So if you’re just starting out using LinkedIn Search Bar and see what people are talking about and the influencers or thought leaders that are consistently talking about your content topics, right? They don’t have to necessarily be a competitor, but just the types of content that you want to talk about your industry, your expertise find those people that are already doing it and follow them. And one way you can do that is just by typing things in the search bar and looking at who’s posting it and then just perusing their feeds and then making sure they’re on your radar as well.
Bill Sherman So I want to expand on what you said there, I think one of the things that a lot of people when they go on to LinkedIn or any other social media is they start as a passive consumer of what’s in their News Feed, right? And they’re assuming the world is only reading what the provider, LinkedIn or Twitter, et cetera, is putting in that feed. You need to take agency on that to start crafting that feed. So there’s more signal for you, rather than just relying on an algorithm somewhere determining what’s going to engage you. The more you craft your feed, and you like you said using search, for example, or looking at the people that you follow. The more likely you will spend meaningful time online because there’s less noise
Mandy McEwen for sure, and when you start engaging with that strategic content, it’s going to start showing you more of that same type of content. So your feed is going to be filled with legit content that you actually like should be spending your time commenting on. Because that’s what I think too is like, you know, we’re sitting here telling people comment. But Bill, we didn’t really get into like, be strategic because how you’re commenting?
Bill Sherman Well, and that’s where I want to go on your site.
Mandy McEwen Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Because there’s so many like massive influencers on LinkedIn, right? And they might have nothing to do with your industry or target market at all. And it’s fine every now and then if you leave a comment on them. But I see so many people like I’m leaving comments on, you know, these people with a million followers. I’m like, That’s not going to get you clients, though, you know, like you might get some visibility, but you have to be strategic. So I’m glad you brought that up because we’re not just encouraging people to go willy nilly, start posting on anything. You know, you have to be strategic about it.
Bill Sherman Absolutely. And you also have to be patient. It’s yes, in some ways, you know, and these days, putting out resumes and job searches, you know, there are so many applications flying around right now in the summer of 2021 and people looking for different roles from that. But the way that I view. The conversation stream on LinkedIn is that it’s going to take a while for you to join that stream and for people to recognize you. One comment isn’t going to get someone to look at you and go, Oh wow, this person is brilliant, I need to hire them or their company. They changed my life right
Mandy McEwen from one comment. No consistency and patience is key. You have to be consistent. That’s why I mean, if you leave five comments a day for two weeks, you’re going to get some visibility. If they’re asked, you know, if they’re decent comments, right? But like you said, it takes time, but not just time, but consistency. You can’t post three comments one week, zero the next and then 20 the next. Like, it doesn’t work that way. You have to be consistent. That’s why I tell people put it on your freaking calendar. Like literally put down these little simple tasks. Leave five comments a day, like block it into your calendar so it gets done.
Bill Sherman And with that, this becomes something that if your organization is trying to move to a place where your sales team is using LinkedIn or social for social selling or you’re using it for thought, leadership and channels, then you have to recognize that people need time that they can allocate to this. And you also as a manager or leader, need to coach to that right? You have to get them past that insecurity of an initial posting and past the impatience of, well, I left 10 comments today. Why didn’t the phone ring with a lead not going to happen?
Mandy McEwen Right, right. Well, and you bring up a good point too about, you know, just kind of empowering your team. A lot of a lot of employees also are kind of afraid to even get on LinkedIn because they might if the organization has not discussed this right. If you’re not empowering your people, they might think that you think that they’re just messing around on LinkedIn and not actually spending quality time. So they might, you know, a lot of people raise concerns like, I don’t even know, like if this is, you know, obviously not ones that hire us for LinkedIn, but ones that I haven’t even thought about it yet. They’re like, Well, I want to be active on LinkedIn more. But like, my employer hasn’t really encouraged that. And to me, like, I don’t want to get in trouble for me, spending time on social media, you know? So these are conversations that needs to happen at the managerial level and above with empowering your employees to do this and saying, Look, we want you to spend time on LinkedIn, and here’s how we want you to spend that time on LinkedIn. We’re going to show if you
Bill Sherman do offer a tip or two to that manager, what would you say of how do you start that conversation and what are the two or three things that you say during that conversation?
Mandy McEwen Yes. So first of all, is letting them know like we want you to spend time on LinkedIn. Like, that’s key. No one is just like letting them know, look, LinkedIn is a really amazing resource for us as a company to grow not just our authority thought leadership visibility, but sales opportunities as well. And we want you all leveraging it but in a strategic way and then kind of laying that out for them. So here’s what we want you to do. So you kind of have to give them. This is what we do for organizations is we really empower them by giving them these sort of resources. So examples, right? So here’s an example of four meaningful comments that we left, and here’s an idea you hear people that you can follow, so you can’t just say, like, this is what we want you to do. Have fun by you. Do it because it won’t happen right? Or if it doesn’t happen in the greatest way possible. So you kind of have to guide them. And this is where, you know, hiring companies helps the LinkedIn experts that kind of can guide you through this. But if you’re a manager, this great at LinkedIn, awesome. You can kind of do this for them and just give them examples of these are the people. These are the hashtags I want you to follow. These are the types of posts. Here’s an example of a comment that’s great. If you want to share our company posts, this is what you can say. You know, like, share it and then give your either take a quote from it or leave your two cents on ensuring it just kind of walking them through. This is what works on LinkedIn. Here are some examples, and this is what we want you to do. So giving them those resources and kind of training even at a very high level, so they feel comfortable doing that.
Bill Sherman One of the things that I use as a analogy to this is if you were to send people to a trade show back when we had trade shows or we will at the future post, right? And you told people, go talk to people that trade show, but you didn’t equip them in any way. And you told them there’s a booth in the exhibition hall. Go talk to people. Good luck. Be well, right? Same thing. You would have this deer in the headlights look of horror of what do you want me to do? Except here they’re doing it on their phone. They’re doing it from home. They’re doing it at work. And it’s something where they can’t escape it. It’s not just one trip to a conference somewhere. They’re expected to be present regularly. So talk about that anxiety a little bit. Have you seen it? You have a story or an example that you’ve run across as you’ve worked with organizations and individuals?
Mandy McEwen Yeah, no. There’s every all of them azione over this, right? And that’s why it’s just a matter of getting people comfortable with the whole process in general and then making it a part of their daily tasks. Right? And that’s a big thing, too, is like it shouldn’t be seen as like this burden that we’re forcing you to do as a company. Right. And I’m speaking as if I’m a manager of a company, right? Like it should be something that is worked into your daily prospecting, like you’re already doing these things you’re already making. You know, if they’re making outbound calls and outbound emails, leveraging sales navigator, you guys are already spending your time on this, so it just needs to be part of the process. And so when you make it part of the process, like it’s just like a no brainer. This is just what we do. And you empower people to a point where they feel comfortable doing it and they have the resources and then they can go back and get help and ask questions. Then it’s fine. And that anxiety kind of disappears once they get into it, right? I mean, they’re going to be a little, you know, until they start doing it. And then they realize, Oh, this isn’t so bad when you give them what they need, you know? But it’s just making this part of the normal process and empowering them with the tools and strategies, et cetera, that they need to make it happen.
Bill Sherman If you are enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you’d like to help spread the word about the podcast, please leave a five star review and share it with your friends. We are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all major platforms, as well as at Leveraging Thought Leadership dot com. I know you’ve used LinkedIn personally as a platform for many years, and then you focused your business for also a number of years on really helping people understand that as a platform, where have you seen people get tripped up? What mistakes have they made that they almost look at and go, Oh man, we tried this, we regret it. And boy, never again
Mandy McEwen a couple come to mind. The first one is just the obvious, which everyone I feel like most companies at some point have tried this, or at least like have been bombarded by people. It’s just like the cheating way of using LinkedIn, which is just blasting out messages to people. Even if you don’t use automation, it’s just OK. We have this list of people. This is our ABM target list. Go out there and start sending loads of emails, you know, and that’s what they do. And that’s their version of LinkedIn. Lead Gen is just we have a list of people. Let’s go send them as many emails as we possibly can and then just wait to see
Bill Sherman what happens, annoy them till they say yes, right?
Mandy McEwen Exactly. And just keep sending them until someone responds and says yes. Yep, yeah. So and unfortunately, a lot of enterprises are still doing that, you know, which is why we exist to help them with that, because I don’t like email at all. We’d retrain, build relationships and send connection requests to people. There’s no need to send an email unless they’re not allowing people to send them requests like, I get that some people’s privacy settings, but there’s no there’s no need to send call. It’s just like a cold email. And I don’t even know you like, doesn’t work. It doesn’t work as much anymore. So that’s the first thing. And then the second thing is just corporatized and everything quite content. LinkedIn is just lame. It’s very corporatized. It’s just all corporate speak. It’s not humanized. So it lacks that storytelling element because it’s just they’re just sending people to white papers and webinars, you know, and I feel like that happens a lot. Still, too, is because people don’t know how they should be leveraging and people and executives, you know, running these LinkedIn pages for enterprises, they just don’t really they’re not armed with. But, you know, the knowledge and experience to know what you know, because it’s that’s just what you do. Like historically, posts lead magnets, you know, and webinar invites to social media. And so those are two things that I still see happening that. Just aren’t working anymore or ever in mail, really never worked. Oh, the corporate speak, it’s enough to be like, Oh, look there, they’re active on LinkedIn, but nothing else happens. You get a couple of likes, maybe a couple of comments, but it’s not driving anything. You know, it’s checking the box and saying, Yes, I did it right.
Bill Sherman. So let’s explore for a moment some of the experiments that you’ve done. I know you’ve done a fair amount of LinkedIn life, for example, and you’re continually trying and exploring new things. Always talk to me about when you’re working on a platform, the experimentation mindset that you need.
Mandy McEwen Yeah, it’s key, Bill, honestly. And you can’t. And that’s the thing too is you kind of have to have a thick skin in this in this content creation world, right? Because you have to be willing to experiment and try new things. And if something falls flat, that’s OK. You can’t get upset about it or beat yourself up about it, right? I am constantly experimenting and trying new things just to see what’s working and what isn’t. So you kind of have to have that mentality of, you know, kind of like an investigator, if you will, right? So I’m going to try my own things, test it out. But I’m also going to look at what other people are doing and try to gauge from there what I feel like is doing well and maybe take a little bit of that into what I am doing. But you 100 percent have to have this. Let’s try see what happens and let’s keep optimizing mentality like it’s never ending. Marketing in general is an iterative process. I mean, it never ends, right? Content creation is no different. Like you’re always looking for new things, trying new things, optimizing, trying to figure what works, what doesn’t. I mean, it’s a never ending game. So if you’re if you’re not comfortable with that, then it’s just not going to work and it could be something that you grow over time. I’m not saying you have to be comfortable with that right out the gate, but you do if you want to succeed with this over time.
Bill Sherman So what percent of your experiments succeed and what sort of your threshold of the. It’s worth trying out, right? So what’s your success rate in terms of experiments? Because my guess is that’s probably a lower number than most people would think because I see you try a lot of things.
Mandy McEwen So I feel like everything is a success to some degree because I learn, right? OK. OK, well, what does success to be
Bill Sherman done if you frame it that way?
Mandy McEwen Yeah, yeah, right? I would say, Oh, I don’t know. I would say probably. And it depends on how we’re defining success, right? We could sit here all day talking about like the granular details here, but I would say over 50 percent, probably in some degree. But I would say, like, let’s just say 50 50, like we just put it down the middle and say 90 percent do really, really, really well and the other 50 do all right, you know, but there’s still something to learn from that, you know? So I’m just throwing that out there because there is so much still that, you know, if we post something and it’s not a home run, but we’re like, Oh, we learned a lot about this just from the comments or, you know, whatever it is, there’s always little things we can take away from that.
Bill Sherman So are you and just the process you approach? Are you the sort of style of rapid prototype it? Get it out and see how it works or you plan, plan, plan? Then let’s pull the trigger.
Mandy McEwen Yeah. I am a very fast mover, right? So I am get it out the door. But in a way that’s quality. So I’m also OCD perfectionist, too. So it’s like this interesting dynamic with me is like, I’m a really fast mover, but I want it done right, you know, so I we don’t spend tons of time planning, like you said, like ten point plan, but we do. I personally and I parts of my team, I do make sure it’s quality and I’m spending time to make sure that this is what I want associated with my name and my face, right? But I we very much are fast movers where, OK, we have this idea. Let’s get it done. Let’s get any edits out and let’s get it out the door. We don’t spend weeks planning.
Bill Sherman We’ve been throwing the words content and thought leadership around on a regular basis in this conversation. I’d love to hear your definitions of content and thought leadership. And how are the same or how are they different?
Mandy McEwen Oh, that’s a really good question. One hundred percent different. No question. They are completely different. Anyone can throw up content. Any company. Any person can throw up content. And that is content in. Thought leadership is completely different. Ballgame, because with thought leadership, you are really trying to start meaningful dialog within a community and not only, you know, brand yourself as kind of this person starting this dialog, which would be the thought leader and kind of bringing up these ideas and discussions. But you’re also pulling in other people for that discussion, which is kind of a circle of thought leadership, right? And so to me, there are two totally different things and not on that note earlier, we’re like, Do you plan, plan, plan? You do need to plan a little bit for thought leadership content. It’s not, and especially people like people like you and I who are used to this. This is what we do for a living. It’s easier for you and I to come up quickly, come up with thought leadership content. This is what we do every day. I get that most people are not like us. I understand. So with that said, you do need to plan a little bit for the thought leadership content in terms of like what? What is it that you’re your market? What are their pain points? What are they? What are they trying to accomplish and how can you be the resource? So don’t you’re not another sales rep. You are an industry trusted resource. How do you how do you get that way by sharing meaningful, helpful, constant and starting dialog around that, that is totally different than throwing up a link to a webinar which can be considered content.
Bill Sherman One of the things I wind up doing is I’ll keep a running note of conversations that I have through the day, and after each conversation I have, I try to record one thing where I like to turn a phrase or an idea or something, they said or something that I, the person I was talking to. They said it was an issue or something they’re concerned about because those conversations are ongoing. Sort of like catalysts for you to be able to create meaningful. Material for people, and I think what we do often is we go through conversations so fast meeting to meeting, especially in the Zoom world, that we don’t take that 30 seconds to go, Oh, what did I say that was good? What what? Turn of phrase that I use that I should use again? Right? What ideas shall flush out a little bit? And so if you insert that wedge, that becomes a good way, especially if you’re just starting out trying to figure it out.
Mandy McEwen Yeah, it’s a mindset shift, really, bill. So that’s why I tell people, if you are consciously aware that every conversation you have, even your thoughts can be turned into thought leadership content, it becomes a hell of a lot easier, but you have to train your mind to think like that. So just like you said, every phone call I’m on, I’m taking notes on every phone call. I’m like, Oh, that was good, I’ll build it. I’ll write myself a little comment in the Google Doc and I’ll go back and I’ll add it to my content list. So my brain is constantly like, Oh, that was a good thought. And I tell this to sales reps like, there are people asking me questions every single day. You’re talking to prospects, people are asking you questions. People are coming up with challenges. Write those down. Make a post like boom. You have felt leadership content, but most people aren’t. They haven’t trained their brain to think like that yet. You know, and it’s like a habit that you and I have. It’s ingrained in us.
Bill Sherman Not, but it’s also a skill that needs to be developed. And I’d love to hear your thought on this because I think more and more if we look now versus 10 years ago versus looking 10 years in the future, the ability to be able to be a leading voice within whatever field you’re working on becomes essential. You need people who turn to you, look to you and say, What are you saying? My thought is, if you’re invisible on social media specifically, you’re invisible in sales.
Mandy McEwen Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah. And that’s like what I what I’m trying, you know, my whole goal with working with enterprise sales teams is to get that through their head like, look, you don’t want to just be another sales rep on LinkedIn. No one like sales reps on LinkedIn. No one likes stars, no one likes. VR is like everyone avoids them, like the plague. But if you are seen as a trusted resource because you’re sharing valuable content and you’re engaging with the community and you’re helping people, then you’re not seen as just another sales rep. Like you were legitimately seen as a trusted industry resource. And it doesn’t matter what your sales title or what your job title is, if it’s sales or not. And that’s how you that’s how you get an amazing sales team that is doing big things and blows your competition out of the water because most sales teams are not doing that. But when you empower and train your sales teams properly to think like that, it’s a whole new ballgame.
Bill Sherman Well, and what you can do is in addition to having sales talking to customers, you can have sales, talk to people within the organization from different perspectives and really accelerate the flow of ideas and insights that are already within your organization, out and beyond. And so whether that’s inviting someone from a customer support or fulfillment perspective and having them talk to your sales team just to hear are things that you can share with your audience. Those pieces of bringing knowledge forward to your client or customer,
Mandy McEwen totally the products team, right? Like, there’s so many different ways. You know you can do that within an organization. It’s just taking the time and making sure it happens right, which is a big challenge. What most enterprises aren’t doing enough. And if you’re
Bill Sherman a sales manager, you back in the old days of boiler room sales, you would be used to OK. Did you call on X number of prospects today, right? Did you make your number of calls or your number of visits now? I mean, yeah, you could say, did you make X number of comments or posts this week, right? But it’s a different sort of relationship building. You have to be real and present on LinkedIn or any other social platform. Otherwise that often lack of authenticity shines through because it’s missing.
Mandy McEwen Yeah, and that’s the thing, and that’s why it is totally different. It’s a longer game now, but you’re slowing down the outreach to speed up the outcomes. My good friend Brant says, right, so you’re slowing it down, but you’re getting way better results. So it’s going to take longer to build these relationships. But once you do that, they start coming in like crazy and then you are just it’s a snowball effect. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And not to mention, they’re easier to sell because you’re building a relationship and you’re helping them ahead of time. It’s not so much a numbers game anymore. Like by example, you said it’s a numbers game, but old school sales. How many calls have you made? How many emails did you send? Right? It’s all numbers, numbers, numbers. It’s not like that anymore. You still need the numbers. Yes, I’m not. I’m not saying that’s not important, but you have to be more strategic about it. It’s not just about how many people do you call, how many people did you blast out messages and emails? So that’s not how it works. You have to be very strategic and build meaningful relationships, and there’s a whole process for that that you need to follow in order to get lasting results that are going to. You not only obviously increase your sales, but help the company for the long haul be seen as a trusted industry influence that is making an impact and doing the things for the industry in the community, not just another company that has a bunch of sales reps that are lazy and just trying to spam people.
Bill Sherman So that’s a really good point to end on. You and I could talk for another couple of hours easy as a full speed, but let’s leave it here. I want to ask you one question if someone wants to reach out to you and get in touch. How do they do so?
Mandy McEwen How LinkedIn? Of course we diversify. So Mandy McEwen at LinkedIn and then Luminaire Dot Io is our LinkedIn specific agency, but I’m always available on LinkedIn. It probably be easier. So hit me up there and be more than happy to connect and feel free to send a connection message and mention that you’ve heard me on Bill’s podcast and we can chat and go from there.
Bill Sherman Awesome. Thanks, Mandy.
Mandy McEwen Thank you so much, Bill.
Bill Sherman If you’re interested in organizational thought leadership, then I invite you to subscribe to the OrgTL Newsletter. Each month we talk about the people who create, curate and deploy thought leadership on behalf of their organizations. Go to the website orgtl.com and choose Join our newsletter. I’ll leave a link to the website as well as my LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to hearing what you thought of the show.
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