David J.P. Fisher’s Post

Want an example of building relationships in the online world?   Me and Steve Gilman. We’ve never met in the offline world, but I’ve learned so much from him in the conversations we’ve had here on LinkedIn. That’s why I was chuffed that I’ve gotten to join him on his podcast, not once, but twice. In this latest conversation we dove into a lot, but I think a lot is summed up by this exchange. The core idea: Don’t do bad stuff faster. Check this out and the whole conversation if you want to look at ways to create connections that lead to better business outcomes. #podcast #networking #sales #automation

“Is it possible to use Sales Navigator to help my senior leaders?” That was a question posed to me by the head of a sales organization the other day. And it was a valid question. The needs and objectives of a senior leader in a large sales organization are very different than those of a front-line inside sales rep, account executive, or sales manager. And there are other constraints as well. Just some that were brought up in the conversation: ▶ A senior director could be working with 5 managers that work with 8 sellers that have 5 accounts. That’s 200 accounts. That’s too many for them to save to their Sales Navigator account. ▶ What happens when an AE skips a few levels and asks the senior leader to connect with a prospect on LinkedIn? ▶ How does that senior leader find time to do all of this? All of these are totally valid constraints. But the one advantage that the leader has is the power of leverage. Their experience and their title can be really helpful in building connection, authority, and influence. The key, as with anything, is being strategic. So here are a few steps senior leaders can take: ▶ Lead by example by posting 2-3 times a week to establish a strong brand and presence. Talk about the great results you are driving for your customers and how fantastic your people are. Add comments on the posts from your team. Get your internal resources to help you and schedule your posts a few weeks at a time. ▶ Have your direct reports share one account that would benefit the most from your involvement. Add it to Sale Navigator but also use it as an “in” to talk about the strategy that the team is taking with that prospect/customer. ▶ Add social selling/LinkedIn/tech stack conversations to your meetings so that your direct reports know that they should add it to theirs. What you focus on, they’ll focus on. Senior leaders might not be on LinkedIn or Sales Navigator every day. But it’s a platform where their managers, sellers, prospects, and customers are talking. So it’s important that they at least can speak the language. #deepsales #salesnavigator #salesleadership #socialselling #sales Becky Brown Anthony Carlson Peter Cibula Amari Gonzalez 💯 David Hewett Susan L. Kleber Wedemann (He / Him), LLB Alexander Low

A lot of cultures and spiritual practices use the metaphor of the warrior to describe the journey of personal growth and transformation. I think of this idea when holidays that honor our soldiers come up on the calendar. Today is Memorial Day in the US, where we remember fallen soldiers. I think it’s important to remember their sacrifice, but I also think it’s important that we use that memory as an impetus for reflection and future action. I wrote this for an article on Memorial Day a few year s back. I wanted to remind myself and others that we all have a role to play so that others don't have to make that sacrifice. "It strikes me that the best way to become a better citizen and honor the warriors that have fought for the country is to remind ourselves to be inner warriors. The better we become as individuals the better we become as citizens – both of the country and the world. Albert Einstein once said that problems can’t be solved at the same level that they were created. In the same way we can’t solve the problems of our country and our world if we don’t first improve as people. If you want to honor the soldiers that made the sacrifices in the past, work to create a better world so we don’t have to ask our children and our children’s children to make the same sacrifices."

People have pitched me networking CRMs and tracking systems over the years. But they all suffer from one problem: Networking is not a straight-line exercise. It’s about creating a true network: a bunch of inter-connected points that overlap and reinforce each other. And it’s messy. It’s why I focused on “networking karma” when I published Networking in the 21st Century. The key is to put effort and energy into your network and networking activities without getting stuck on needing a direct and immediate payoff. Our Long Room get-together reminded me of that this month. Andy Crestodina and I started it 7 years ago because we just wanted to keep having beers, er I mean, conversations and wanted other to join. Catherine Altman Morgan has been a constant for years and has become a trusted friend and advisor. A mutual friend introduced me to Megan E. Mozina 4 years ago and we finally met in person! Megan Knee was a Zumba instructor colleague from a decade ago who now runs a kick-butt design company. I met Daniel Tomei 8 or 9 years ago through a friend and he has become a client, friend, and man who makes my headshots look great. I could keep going.  Heather H. Bennett Jenn Dudley Mindi Zissman Michael Ledajaks Carolyn Mark J. Carter Zach Person April Samuelson, Jason Wolf and so many more make this gathering, and the 1:1 conversations in between, so meaningful. The key for me has been showing up and being open to where the conversations lead. Looking forward to next month at the Long Room and all the ones after! Thanks for making it such a fun group #networking #networkingworks #chicago

Pipeline reviews are not coaching conversations. It’s a simple distinction. But mistaking the two will tank your team’s sales success. Pipeline reviews are about managing deals. Looking at the numbers and forecasting based on them. Even though they we use the word forecast, pipeline reviews are really backwards looking. “What has been done up to this point to get a deal to the state it’s in. And they focus on the deal, not the person responsible for the deal. Coaching conversations are about influencing future behavior and actions. They are about the person doing the selling. When I started my sales career, I managed college students who were selling Cutco Cutlery. We didn’t have pipelines to review. It was a one-call close model. In my one-on-one conversations, my goal was to drive outreach activity, get the rep to set more appointments, and then make sure they had the skills to make those appointments as effective as possible. So our conversations were much more focused on getting better results in the future based on changing the salesperson’s “input” into the equation. When I entered the world of longer sales cycles (i.e. pipelines and forecasting), I saw why it was important to track/forecast pipeline and review deals with the field. But I also saw that too many managers thought that getting those numbers was the point of a pipeline review. “What stage is this deal at? What is the likelihood of them moving forward?” That’s a start. But they missed out on the important questions to ask: “What can you do differently than the past to improve the likelihood of this moving forward?” And: “How can I help?” #coaching #sales How do you differentiate between pipeline reviews and coaching? Tom Latourette Peter Cibula Casey Jacox Andy Paul David New Alexander Beck Anita Nielsen

I have to renew my “LinkedIn guru” card so I guess it’s time for a semi-regular post with my opinions on the LinkedIn newsfeed algorithm. (Insert laugh/sigh/forehead slap emoji here.) I’d like to say that I have some sort of insights to share. But I’m not sure that’s possible. Because: 1️⃣ The algorithm is a black box. 2️⃣ It changes rapidly and inconsistently across users. 3️⃣ LinkedIn is a big company with different stakeholders with different incentives to pull different levers. 4️⃣ With millions upon millions of updates posted every day, you can’t get an externally-sourced, statistically-relevant sample that helps you understand 1 and 2 and 3. There have been people and organizations that have tried to parse it, but they’re trying to explain a moving target that presents itself in various ways to various audiences. (Although I think Richard van der Blom and his crew do put together a pretty useful starting point every year.) I can tell you that it’s been shifted and shuffled around quite a bit over the past 12 months. Many regular contributors have seen their impressions go down even while engagement has remained steady. That’s a bit odd. And we aren’t even talking about the big puddle of variables that make each of your posts act differently from each other. So what can I tell you that will actually be useful? For the vast majority of people reading this post (and who even knows how many that will be), here’s my suggestion: Don’t worry about it. Until you are playing with big numbers and trying to drive big top-of-funnel results (which I don’t think is effective in the current state), working to game the algorithm just doesn’t make sense. Instead, think about your most important audience. Be clear about the couple hundred people you need to be seen by and that you want to influence. And share content that you think they’ll find useful. Start the conversations that you want to have with them. Don’t share information because you think you have to. Share because you want that audience to engage. Do that regularly and people will start to pay attention and engage. And from there you can tweak the copywriting, or worry about images or structure. But if you start writing for the people you want to talk to... in a way that you would want to be talked to… You’ll find people start talking back. That’s the goal. (And speaking of talking back, if you want to toss around theories, tips, and best practices in the comments, let's do it!) #socialselling #linkedIn #deepsales #salessherpa #sales Anthony Carlson Becky Brown Steve Watt Brandon Lee Jared Gibson Susan Berger Mariana Lima Kicki Bjorkvall Bas Belfi Susan L.

Do you answer your cellphone if it’s only a number – and not a name that you have already saved into your phone? I asked that question to a room of 10 business owners and leaders a few weeks ago. Only 2 said they did, and both said that they have children and they didn’t want to miss a call from another parent or from the school. Notice that those two didn’t say they did pick up the phone because they were hoping a seller was calling them about a revolutionary new product or service… How about for you? When was the last time you responded to an email or took a call from someone you didn’t know from a company you’d never heard of about a solution you didn’t wake up thinking you needed? Statistically, it’s probably been a while (or maybe never). Cold outreach is rough right now. Not impossible. But rough. What if you didn’t have to make any cold calls? For teams with access to Sales Navigator, you can minimize your need for cold outreach with TeamLink. This should be your first step when trying to break into a new account or new area of an existing account. Teamlink shows you which colleagues at your company are connected to a LinkedIn member that you want to contact. You don’t even have to be connected to your colleague on LinkedIn. As long as you are both on the same Sales Navigator license, you will be shown possible introduction paths. You can find possible Teamlink introductions in the Lead Search Filters and right in Relationship Explorer It makes it easy to send a message to your teammate, “I was trying to get in touch with Sue Smith and Company X. I think that our new line of fancy widgets would be really useful for them. Do you know her well enough to introduce us? Super-easy. Maybe your teammate doesn’t know them well enough…or maybe they play pickleball every week and your meeting ask is easy as pie. At worst, there’s no connection and you follow your normal cold outreach cadence. But there are so many upsides. When faced with the choice to add more spam to the world or build a relationship, choose wisely. #referrals #deepsales #salessherpa #salesnavigator #teamlink Anthony Carlson Becky Brown Ari Jubelirer Sean Murray David New Tania Marthinsen Alexander Low Amari Gonzalez 💯

Commenting on LinkedIn posts is one of the easiest ways to break into someone’s sphere of influence. Which is why it’s so strange to me that more people don’t leverage it. There are many reasons why more of us don’t comment, but I think we’re often tripped up by the digital nature of the interaction. Salespeople who have no problem chatting with someone new at a tradeshow will clam up when considering social engagement. So here are 3 guidelines to help you start commenting more on LinkedIn posts this week. (Yes, this week, as in today. Don’t wait and waste more time.) 1️⃣ Comment every day. This is a habit to develop. You can’t show up once every few weeks and expect it to be useful. 2️⃣ Imagine the person who posted the content is right in front of you. If they had just said what they shared, how would you respond? Would you ask a question, add your opinion, make an inside joke? All of those are relevant responses…write ‘em down. 3️⃣ It's great if your comment adds value, but more importantly you want it to add to the conversation. Too often people are afraid to comment because they think they have to add an earthshattering insight in the comments.  Nope. Just adding your authentic perspective will do nicely. And your bonus: ⭐ Do it now! Add a comment below if you want to practice. Or scroll down your feed a little and find another post to engage with. Moving from lurker to participant is the key to building relationships here on LinkedIn…get to it! #commenting #socialselling #personalbrand #deepsales Anthony Carlson Becky Brown Kicki Bjorkvall Sophie Peremans Scott Feldman Alexander Beck Steve Watt Haney Abdelaziz 🙉🙈🙊Joey Davenport,

Gardening update with a business twist. It’s almost time to start “hardening off” the seedlings inside so I they can be planted in the garden. Here are the trays that are living on the grow room floor. They are a tale of success and failure. The tomatoes in the background are doing great. But those empty pots in the foreground are peppers that I’ve replanted because the ones from the first go-around grew poorly and are stunted. And way in the back corner are the melons that grew too quickly and are dying because I couldn’t get them out in time. And the onions that just failed to germinate are off camera. So if you ask me how my gardening is going, how I answer will depend completely on what I’m looking at. Like life and business, it’s a matter of where you put your attention. We all have success and failure as the ingredients of our stories. The stories we tell others, and ourselves, depends on where we put out focus. You probably had both wins and losses this week. Which ones are you going to take with you into the weekend? It’s your choice. #focus #choice #personalgrowth

Here's an old school networking tip that many have forgotten. Have a short list of your favorite people to connect with in different parts of your area. These can be friends, close networking partners, or even people that you'd like to get to know better. It doesn't have to be a long list, even 3-5 that you have in each part of town you might be in. Then, when you find yourself going to that area, reach out and see if they have a few minutes to get together. It doesn't have to be formal. It can be an ask for a cup of coffee or even just a 15-minute chat. It's even OK to ask them the day before. In fact, it can be better because they'll know if they have a few minutes free. You can even say that you only want to grab 20 minutes to see them in person and connect offline, because "online just can't compare". I guess this is a version of having a "water cooler conversation" that we would have officemates, but with our external networking partners. I've found it very useful, especially as more of my work is remote and from my home office. When my work takes me to downtown Chicago or one of the neighborhoods around the city, I reach out and see if I can tag on an extra conversation. It doesn't always work. That's OK. At the very least you let the other person know that you were thinking of them, and you can try to set something up the next time you are in the area. And on good days, you get to add conversations in with awesome people like Isabelle Papoulias and Heather H. Bennett (even if I only remembered to take a "LinkedIn official" photo with Heather. #networking #networkingworks #humantohuman