Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, we have Ian Moyse. Ian, welcome.
Thank you and appreciate the invite to join you today.
That’s no problem, thank you for attending. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Sure. So I am a sales leader in the technology sector, more precisely the cloud computing area. The piece that was all the wondrous stuff we’re seeing today from smartphones, two applications to Netflix, all that type of thing. So a pretty important part of our everyday lives, particularly covid remote times. I do guesting on speaking and guest speaker on this. So I talk on subjects of cloud computing technology and sales leadership, driving business growth and success. And I’ve been involved in seven start-up smaller firms and taking four through to exit as the sales leader. So I hope I’ve got some good experience of the good, the bad and the challenges that can give some insight today.
That’s a good introduction. Thank you. Although the topic of discussion, or the proposed one is, personal branding. Happy to talk about that today? Yeah, absolutely. It’s very pertinent in the world that we know in? Absolutely. Well, that’s kind of touches upon one thing and that is why is why is it that you think it is popular at the moment and how would you define it? Sure. So a lot of people use a personal brand and I fell into this. Let’s start from there. Maybe I didn’t set out all. Let’s build a personal brand that sounds all illustrious and celebrity like, right? I fell into it because in doing a sales role I fell into, well, it’s got harder and harder to engage prospective clients. It just has. And even more so in the world that we’re going in the customer, we are the customer Thomas me and you are customers of different things that we all our customers and we all behave differently. We did 10 years ago. We’ve got more information at our fingertips. So why do I need to talk to someone or be sold to? I can figure it out myself. I can assimilate information. I can find everything about you, Thomas. I can find everything about your business reviews online, just by all these different things.
I’ve got so many data points. What why would I need to talk to you other side if you want to come to you and buy something right? Which isn’t good if you’re a business trying to create engagement with a prospective client. So I looked started to get into how do I use social, how do I use it as a salesperson, not marketing to engage a client to find them, identify them and get a conversation open into the old world, convert converse, speak on the phone or meat. And through that I realised that what a whole part of that is how people perceive you and personal branding is others perception of you. We all have a personal brand whether you like it or not, it is your others perception of you and that isn’t just on social media, although that is probably the one we’ll talk about now is the one that in business is the most prevalent. The personal brand is what the Pope people’s perception of you. Do they think you’re good? Do they trust you? Well, they think you’re too big to deal with or too small for them. That is your personal brand.
What you come across as. And in today’s digital world, why it’s more important than ever. Think about the world we’ve just entered. How many of us are working from home? How many of us listening to the news, funnily enough this morning. How many businesses and big businesses are deciding to work? If not totally remote, partly remote. If you’re remote, I would challenge something that how many of you have been on a video call with someone during this? I’m sure we all have at some point, we’ve all seen that the different examples of screen images being shared and you see their name on the screen as I can see yours now Thomas and while I’m talking to you, I could quite easily spin up in another window here and you wouldn’t really see me doing it. Three screens here. I can spin up another window. Your LinkedIn profile starting today. Who’s this Jane that’s on this brick with this? And I can be checking out that’s your personal brand? I’m checking out, right? I’m not calling it that I’m just checking you out as a human being. That wouldn’t have happened in the normal world. Typically it could, but often what would happen is you meet someone and you go to a meeting and they rushed from another meeting and they didn’t have time to quickly kick you out.
They were too busy. They come down to reception, pick you up, you go into a meeting room, the three people you weren’t expecting to meet and you can’t carry, hang on a second while I just power this up and see what I think of you and what, what I can find out about you and you can’t do it now. A lot of this is happening remotely where it’s before we speak with sat in front of the computer anyway a few minutes before and often you’re sat there 10 minutes before 20. You’re doing stuff, anyway. I think I’ve done that call in a minute. Who’s on the call or let’s just have a look at who they are and you bring it up just beforehand. But as I said, you can do it during so personal brand is more important than ever. Another context of that is if you’re looking for a job at some point in the whole sphere that we’re in or you are an employer listening who are seeking to hire people? Do you not check them out? And do they not check you out? And it isn’t just about checking the company, but if you look at all the see lots of surveys on linked in about why people need companies. So it’s not because the company because of their boss, why do they do what attracted them to join a particular company?
It was the culture, it’s the people, not just the salary and other locations. They are pretty much a neutral one to think about that. Think about that. If you’re a candidate, you don’t think they’re going to check you out and check your profile out and see if you care about how you come across. Oh, I’ve given you my CV. Okay. The first thing I do when I’m gonna see me as a as a recruitment manager, and I’ve been doing it recently, and I always do this is I want to know where they’re linked in. Is first time one of my sales people says to me, I’m talking to experts, they get excited. I got I got this opportunity and it sounds great they were interested and I say, slow down. So who you’re talking to David and did not slow down. Hold on a second, because I want to look them up on LinkedIn and see who the person is. I don’t care about the company at this point? Who is the person you’re speaking to, what I’m looking for is what, what do I know about that person, maybe I’m connected to 20 people head of which I don’t really well. You know them, right? The context there or had one a couple of days ago. Look them up.
Guess what? They’re in South Hampton. Look at the company that prompted me because I’m from Southampton originally following their in car in present. Great. I’m not used to be embarrassed to there. So when I speak to them, there’s a conversation straightaway of warmth, not just great. Let’s do a demo. Its whereabouts which building you in? Well, I lived in South Hampton. Where are you living in South Hampton? Where you know, there’s interaction as it’s the human element, your personal brand, Whether it’s what, what people are seeing of you in business or you as an individual in going for a job is critical in today’s world and people say, well, those ever said thanks so bad about it. No, they won’t because you won’t get told, I tell people if I’m recruiting them and their profile and he lets them down. Part of the peace I give back is thanks so much for applying for the job. And in the interview, one of the things that concern me was that you don’t seem to understand that representing yourself and importance of online by the way. I also saw on your Facebook, lots of drunk pictures that I’ve got access to.
And because they were, they should be looking, well you’ve made it public, make it private to your friends. Fine. You don’t know what damage stuff does have a negative personal brand because most people never hear the bad stuff. It’s all it’s done the damage, but it’s outside your sphere of understanding or visibility. You never get told long answer to a short question. That’s a good answer. I mean, if you’re employing someone or you’re considering doing business with someone, you’re going to use whatever tools are available and if you’re spending a lot of time on linked in, you’re going to use that tool. So 100% agree. Yeah. And here’s the other mistake. People make it for the business people. Listening to this is that we’re not really worried about the personal brand of our individuals because it makes them more attractive to be poached. So we don’t want them to look good. Arlington well, a whatever that’s going to happen is going to happen anyway, right? I’ve heard this before where I don’t want to coach my people to look better on their personal brand because it’s there.
Yes, it is. But it’s a value what they’re with your organisation to support them because it is an interesting one. Great, you gotta linked in profile for your company and you push content now on it. The content that an individual pushes out on, LinkedIn is ranked higher and is more likely to get more engagement than your company has linked his algorithms work that way, treat it linked in is a is a personal platform, not a business platform. It’s the individual, it’s centred around the individual. So if one of your individuals has got lots of great connections they’ve made during their career, and it’s the old rolodex thing, right? If you’ve got road acts, you can bring to us well, if they’ve got lots of great connections that are relevant and they share content. Those connections, your content appears in those feeds, your company posting it. It will not be seen in those by those people unless they’ve chosen to follow your company, it’s very unlikely they’ll see it. Or unless you don’t pay. We’re advertising and linked to and target the audience. You’ve got free adverts from every employee and every employee has got their own little personal brand.
And who do we trust? Who do we engage with? If you go and buy something from Pick and Vodafone, and you deal with some of the shop, it’s the person in the shop that you’re dealing with, not voted for Vodafone’s not doing it, it’s if that person the shop, it’s a bad experience for you. Oh my God, Vodafone today. It wasn’t Vodafone, right? It was sally behind the counter. He had a bad day and treated you treated you badly. But you name it is the brand, but it’s the individual that affects it. That’s what you’ve got to think about in today’s world. People buy from people. People judge your brand based on the brand of the individual they’re engaging with. So what do you do in terms of activity for your team in relation to encouraging, encouraging them around their reputation, their online reputation? Sure, there’s some pretty easy things you can do, right? So the first one is, get them to understand that you support them on linked in. So I’ve got is a good context. I’ve got a new joiners starting next Monday. I have already taken this photo and in five seconds of one website, a couple of clicks taken off the background literally load it.
One click is done. Put another background on which is a nice one of ours and sent it back to him and send him the banner to use on his profile. That’s the easy stuff, right? But he’s already got it ready, Monday to go. I’ve already sent in the text he is when he links to our company what to put in there. I’ve left him to engineer it and try and figure it out and get it wrong. I’ve said here is some stuff you can use that need it. They set you up as looking good for us and then what I do is work with them on looking at their own profiles and coaching them on it and that sends a message in itself. I am more than happy be your you to look good on these platforms because it benefits us and it gives a good professional view to the customer right now. For example, I’ve got this nice backdrop on zoo here, right? Which is so even things like that. I’ve done that. Have those images done. I’ve provided them to the team. I helped them as a leader to look good to help tune there brain, right? That’s the look and feel rather than just let them get on with it and actually I’m not coached them, help them be consistent, help them be professional and what our team’s allowed to do.
And if you go and look at any of my team, you’ll see their postings on that. I’ve been an SDR in this team for two weeks and I just learned this. They post conversational stuff that gets good engagement. It’s real but it’s authentic. I’m not giving themselves they go and post this. They are taking it upon themselves. As long as you don’t go any of the ISMs, right? You don’t know. Don’t go political, don’t go sexist, right. And anything like that. Keep that away. But the you the authentic be you and let them take part and comment on other people engage in other people’s content. We support them and coach them on how to do this. That’s it’s not rocket science. But a lot of people lose because they just stay away from the either let them find their own way and then poo-poo it when they do something they don’t like, well you’ve let them, you let them go well I’m not going to any guidance or support and the second one is or they do the corporate marketing police of yet we don’t touch anything put on everything you do.
This is my view and not representative anything of the company, blah blah blah, but you employed them. So what are you doing looking him in a cupboard, you have to trust people, right? But coach and train them to be able to do stuff in an appropriate manner. That’s why you otherwise what if you can’t trust them in this? Start, start even when you coach them, you’ve employed the wrong people. So is that specific to LinkedIn that you do or do you consider other social platforms? Well, for the, for the market that we’re in do linked in me personally and more because I’ve become by accident social influencer for a number of brands, I’m on twitter LinkedIn, Facebook Instagram, Zing the German one, blah blah blah. So because I need to understand the platforms for a business and that leads to a great plant. The question that I often get asked is well, which platform should I be on? Two things here. One is a lot of businesses making a fundamental mistake of they are as I am, but I’ve got a reason for doing it. The logical reason they’re on every platform, on every platform.
And I asked when I see that and asked people ask me for advice, help me understand why you’re on that platform. And that one and that one and that one give me a good reason not because and the reason isn’t well because it’s there or because we wanted to take the box, it should be because that’s where our customers where audiences, so for us, there’s a business at one up, our audience is on LinkedIn. We sell B2B and an awful lot of our audiences recruitment leaders, recruitment, company leaders were linked in, so that is we’re on twitter, but that’s where we focus on a communication and profile. If you are a small business or business, for example, doing designer furniture, I would, and you’re selling to consumers, I would suggest you’re probably not Lincoln is probably not the key platform for you, It’s probably Instagram because your product is very visual and it’s probably Facebook maybe to draw people to Instagram account, where is your audience where they most likely to expect to engage with your type of business if you’re a kids party clown for kids, you know, then then it’s going to be on Facebook and stuff, you’re not gonna get your customers are linked in.
So I’m probably not twitter because your audience is more likely to be on Facebook. So it’s hick the platform that is relevant to where your target audiences and do it well. Don’t try and do them all. And what I invariably see is you do them all badly because you’re spreading yourself too thinly and I’ve got to do that, I’ve gotta do this. And so what happens is the test for me, The litmus test for me is if someone reaches out to you on, on the, on a platform, you have offered up on social where you’re, where you’re representing yourself, are you going to spot it quickly enough to respond in a timely fashion and be able to do it because I’ve contacted as many people listening what I’ve done, Oh, got to complain about something, I’ll tweet, I’ll Dm this brand and you never get a reply. So why have the boil for it up? You put yourself on the platform, you’ve allowed me to send you a message or tag you in, but you’ve never applied, That’s not my fault. The customer, you spread yourself too thinly that no one’s monitoring or looking at what you get on there, so you don’t care.
So that that that, that I think a couple of other bits of advice, their own socialist pick where your audience is and then do it really well and have your employees in that same sphere and help and coach and support them to have a strong personal brand as an individual personal Bryant as massive value. I’ve fallen into this accident as I mentioned, I am now, uh, official influencer for five or six major global brands outside of my day job in the cloud technology sector, which is where I’ve, I’ve got my expertise and thought leadership and I get reach out all the time. Or could you do this? Can you, could you speak at this event, could you do this? Because my personal brand in the area that I’m in, stands out and it carries something for me. So it’s, it’s paid dividends back, but I didn’t target to do that. Um, and it didn’t come overnight, but it’s slowly, slowly, I appear in a podcast and thank you kindly for taking me on here or, or I take part in a speaking event that gives me an extra bit of content that I share and because my audience got big other people see it, they are.
So it’s this, it’s definitely a domino, a snowball effect. The more you do, the more you take part, the more you will get back. So is that, um, the cause which produces the effect of becoming a quote unquote influencer is, is simply taking part on, on a long-term regular basis. Well, it’s how I got, it’s how it happened for me, I’m not saying just by doing it, you will become an influencer, there’s too many kids there, I think that their aspiration is, I want to be an influence. Uh, okay, well, a lot of influence as we see both in the consumer and the business space. Um, didn’t just appear overnight. So I want to be an influencer. Therefore, where do I sign up right now? I’ve got it, if you, if you look at an awful lot of them because all the different sectors of types of influencer, there’s so many stories are accidentally, it happened. My daughter is into robot blocks, for example, which it is a very good business model. They’re making a fortune, but there is an influence on that. She knows why I now know by name, making plays and so I like it and I’m so excited to see who is this woman is and what it turned out.
It used to be doing stuff on YouTube. Didn’t really have many followers, didn’t get anywhere and she just fell into robots and start to get followers. But she just did a few things and all she’s taken off. Okay, I’ll focus on that and she is now making a fortune and is now one of the global influences in gaming and stuff on robot blocks and is selling merchandise. And if you read look at our little story telling by accident, I didn’t set out to do it. Just found a niche that worked. That’s what happened to me. I suddenly got invited. Would you speak an event on this? Yeah, that works. Someone else sees you because of the content. Oh, I see you speaking events, You don’t do it couldn’t do a blog, could you? Yeah. You’re right blog and you get a reputation of I’ve now blog for All these six, major vendors. Guess what? The next one? You’ve got a calling card now? Yeah. We noticed you do a lot on social about this. Just wondered if. Yeah. And here’s the calling card of all the evidence. Oh, now you get used again. But it was by accident. I didn’t engineer this black reason the reason I cared about this is because of my day job engaging with prospective customers and looking professional.
And when I’m looking, when I’ve been looking for a job in my career, looking at professional and is differential and better than the next candidate. How do you stand out? And the beauty of social media is that in the most it’s free. You can log onto the platform, you can create it, you can create some wonderful content. You can write a blog on some of your expert on, you can follow and connect with people and it’s just time, you know, you have got to go and it’s not like a corporate marketing thing where you want to build a brand where or is it gonna cost you a lot of money? It’s just invest in yourself and it’s your brand for the rest of your career. That’s the other thing to consider goes with you. Have you given any thought to the increase in, let’s say, people are recognising the benefits of doing this? What will be the outcome of many, many people all kind of spending time on their online reputation? How does that look in the future? And well, what I suppose is going to be differentiation when everyone is doing it?
Well, the thing here is I would say not everyone is doing it and you’re not going to get everyone doing it. Not everyone is listening to this block right? Here is the thing I usually say is the people if I run it’s a sales train, whatever I talk about, it’s people that really need it and probably the ones that aren’t listening, the ones that are listening, care about stuff, want to learn and want to adapt and change to the world we’re in and continue to improve the ones that say I never listen to podcast turn of events because I know it all, they’re the ones that probably need it the most. and I say, when I take out this of this skill set of sales people where all sales people are all as good as each other, right? They’re not. I interview so many, I judge awards and most salespeople in my opinion, quite average, right? And I was saying to my salespeople, you only have to be a bit better in that horse race and win the photo finish and you get first prize, you get you get the big prize, the second place really. So it’s not about being 50 times better. It’s about that edge your but in reality you’ll probably be better than a lot.
If you look at how many people on each of these platforms and how many people look average, look through, linked in, scroll through your feed, scroll through the connection or the recommended connections and you know how many stand out to you. And often the ones that stand out through the image itself as well. Our influences because there are some really got time to go through it now. But there are lots of simple tricks that cost no money that make you stand out and get people to look at your profile. Think whoa that I constantly get people and I’m flattered say we looked at your profile before we met, we have this call about your business or vodka or whatever. It is. Really impressed. I’ve never seen something so detailed. I nurture constantly and I look at what others are doing and I still get, oh, I like that or I’ll rephrase that or I like the way they’ve done that. I’m constantly looking for. What can I do? That stands out an example being um, if you ask me how to find my and how do you find me linked in?
I’m gonna say get your moist dot co dot UK reader act. Yeah, I noticed that which costs hardly anything right? It’s, I don’t know, $6 a year or so to host a domain. I’ve got my own about how much more professionals that my name luckily is quite unique. But if I was Paul Smith and so again find your LinkedIn, you’re gonna get a full suite, which one is it? And then you put the company you put, you’ve made the visitor the audience, you put the effort. And then So a simple thing like that straight away that’s different than 50 other people, 1000 other people you get, oh that’s different. Like some I’ve had the guests on actually who did one for each social. So it was like his name followed by YouTube, his name followed by Facebook for each one of them. I’ve done it slightly differently. Interestingly I’ve done, yes. I’ve got a moist dot cloud from a twitter account air moist dot UK. So I think for Facebook air moist dot co dot UK for linked to an invoice dot com for Instagram.
So I’ve done it. But I’ve done it in a slightly different way. And to give you context, I’ve also bought the domain for my daughter and my son who nine and six so that when they get to that point, I’ve already got the domain in case someone else took it because it cost hardly anything to get it. And right, they’ve got that ready for that. There’s your 16th birthday present done. Right. Well, that is forward thinking, isn’t it? But the world we’re in that stuff. Is it going to get like number plates and phone numbers, right? Where you can’t get what you want because you didn’t think about it. I’ve done it and at the moment it just reroutes to me but then at some point I’ll reroute it and they can have their personalised email address and it just again straight away whenever the job market doesn’t that look more professional, something coming from that rather than that Yahoo or Hotmail it’ll look like whoa straight away at the gate but it’s still gonna route back to whatever email they’ve got. Anyway. It’s just a mask. So you mentioned the employees kind of your approach to LinkedIn which I think is kind of cool. But can you tell me what’s that?
Is there any measurable results from doing that that you can share? Yeah. And this is the one where I think business leaders it’s like a bit like marketing like marketing sometimes there’s intangibles that are hard to quantify and measure to the level that people want. Well it’s so R. O. I. Type thing. But in terms of indigenous, it’s different to directly correlate it. That’s the problem is the correlation. But there is a study after study that show those who invoke what we call social selling. Which personal branding is part of is using social media to look good but also to outreach in the appropriate way to nurture to comment to get connections to leverage all of this constantly outperform those that don’t. And there’s numerous studies are around the industry around this, and we’re starting to see now more and more companies investing in this. About 345 years ago, there was this whole Yeah, but not sure.
Suddenly, I don’t know if it’s because of Covid, but certainly the last couple of years, there is a lot more linked in training, going on social media, social selling, training, more books coming out on this. Daniel Disney, a good friend of mine has just released his second LinkedIn book, which is doing really well, why is that happening if there’s no audience for it, and there’s no purpose to it and it doesn’t work. So it works. and one measure is, are you, are your individuals getting new connections with the relevant contacts and audience, and that isn’t just the customer, it’s influences in your space, say, for example, I will connect with people that also are influencing the customer that I’m trying to target. That might be a particular journalist, it might be a thought leader in the in that sector. an analyst, I want to nurture those relationships because if we then get connected and we start to build report and I start to share their content.
And it can be as simple as you start from liking their content, commenting and sharing. Taking part engaging. My perfect world is they invite me to connect. And I’ve had that so many times over the past four or five years where I’ve and it’s authentically but I’m not just going through and liking every bit of content that’s totally relevant. But if they’re talking about sales engagement or they’re talking about thing, customer experience, things that I’m involved with and you’ve got genuine authentic comment to add, add comment and often you’ll find that comment back and I’ve had a past couple days was done, commented on that group and I’ve had the author of that comment back in great comment. I really agree with that point. What do you think about this? Yes, starting a conversation. I have had that happen over time where those people then choose to follow me or send me an invite. So I’m connected in the sales arena. Some of the biggest book authors and bestselling author globally who invited me, I didn’t invite just go connect, connect, connect, connect, connect because I’m just one of everyone sending them over around the world. But because I nurture and took part and quite a few of them I’ve now met because through that engagement and they then chose to follow me and then chose to like some of my comment um, content over time and I remember one reaching out and it feels like I know you I mean the UK for this conference in a month, you’re not you’re not gonna you’re not going to the sales conference in London.
I Yeah, yeah, might be. Which could come and meet me for breakfast one morning. So I sat there with a book author, nice photo to get above and she’s a global bestselling book author in the sales fear. But it wasn’t me going, I’m just Fred Blogs kind of coming up. It was a nurturing relationship is building rapport. Like you were doing the real world slowly over social. Too many people on the social jumped to I want a relationship right? Well it doesn’t work that way, right? You’ve got to put your report Hawkins in your piggy bank when you’ve got enough of them? You can draw out the relationship, you don’t draw out 50 quid from the piggy bank when you only put £10 in. That’s the analogy of what people trying to on social. Well, originally I think social media was supposed to be designed as a relationship building tool. So it’s interesting that yes, it’s a nice analogy regarding trying to get something immediately out of it on the topic of connections, which you touched upon, Do you ever guide your employees on who they should and shouldn’t connect with, Is it like do you encourage them to connect with your customers for example.
Absolutely, absolutely. And I’ve got a little program when my, when my new marketing manager joins in two weeks where one of the little to us, they will get is go through and most people have done it so that we haven’t, I inherited this in the business. Go through all our customers and from the company view that cut the organisation profiles on linked in, go and invite them all to follow us. But the buttons there, right, you just have to go into the list on your company growth. And I’ve done that with a few I’m talking to as I go and there’re new customs are signing with us but go through methodically all of the customers we’ve got and see if they’re not follows. We’ll go and ask them to because they’re not seeing any content we share automatically by not following us. Therefore, there’s less likelihood they’ll engage in it. But if we share good content or a good article linked in our own customers, because they’re familiar with us to have a relationship are more likely to take a look at it and comment and share it, but only if they see it. So unless we’re currently posting it, then tagging in every single one of them manually.
Well, that’s a bit of an effort. So little things you can do like that, that people miss. And what I encourage my team to answer your question is. Yeah. Absolutely. But what I say to me, don’t just let me go out and so I’ve just done a call just now. Okay, so just before this prospective client couple of people, we built some report over about an hour together at that point I’m doing the follow up yet. We really like it and we were going to do this great at that point it feels really comfortable to send them an invite to connect. Really enjoyed the conversation. Love to have a connection here as well. So it’s great to wait. Just you’ve got the interaction and then invite not invite blindly and then come back later and try and do it the other way, right, build a bit of report and then yeah we just had a chat linked in his view. Of course we’re all here is only connect with people you know you know where I’m going. I can see the smile incredibly well. Well yeah that’s great for your view. But you know it’s defined incredibly well.
What we should all only have 20 connections then because how many people do you know in the business work incredibly well. I’ve got people I’ve got a business relationship with I’ve known for years. Have you ever been around my house and the bob keep nowhere. Where do you draw the line? So I get what they’re saying. But there is a value in having a lot of connections. People joked to me years ago I remember working for people with people and they said oh Ian you’ve got like 2.5 1000 connections I think oh my gosh I’ve now got something like 36,000. The level well here’s the benefit. I can see virtually every linked in profile. It’s very rare. I get one that’s outside the network and I can’t get details on. So there is a benefit in having connections and the more wisely you connect the more if you connect with people now as you’re doing this in 345 years’ time very likely are still connected with very few disconnect people. It’s not easy to do. You have to manually go through and who knows where they’re gonna turn up. I have now where my team, I encourage my team, have a look at someone and make sure you’re connected with me obviously and now you’ll see if you look at their profile, oh Ian’s connected with them.
Ask me every time. How are you connected or don’t know, let me have a look. Oh, we connected 11 years ago. Where were they working then? I remember. Great now it’s not we’ve got a relationship but there’s definitely some report I can leverage on. Dave remember when crikey, one of my team just nudged me. Remember when we met in such-and-such? I just wonder if we have another conversation better than cold rights but it’s not a cold call. So You’re building what you do now in this and adding connections again it goes with you what I did 10 years ago, but I didn’t know what the outcome would be and people are connected with or met is still in there now as nuggets of value that I can pull out upon. So I think I wanted to ask you on about brother and it was in relation to sort of activities as someone who’s Active on Social. You did a 62nd pitch. What’s the story behind the 62nd pitch that you picked out? That one cranky. So that was yes. One of the things I always look for and I learned many years ago is to volunteer for things, put yourself out there.
And that was one that was there. They were looking, it was one of the magazines and they were doing this 62nd pitch thing where you go into a room as a technology vendor And you have 60 seconds with a panel of experts and one of them was the CIA of British Airways at the time and remember the other tour but senior people And they got 60 seconds on video production. Little mini production studio type things are nicely done and then they will ask you questions and then you get the thumbs up, thumbs down, judging sort of thing. And okay, so what harm can that do unless you do it badly. But it’s a good profile piece. You get to meet three senior people. So I’m still connected to that individual. There are three individuals very senior people, right? Because I met them. I just spent time with him right with a bit of fun before and go. We’ll be gentle on. Here, we go, right when we’re starting. Um, and so doing that or speaking events, etcetera. And I’ve done it like that before 60 seconds and they stopped it on the second and I stopped on the second.
You may have noticed because I practiced. Don’t just turn up and wing it. I practiced. I’m gonna nail this, the wording, the timing um, to do the best job I could, but that’s now an asset that is on there that you’ve spotted. And I do the same on things like this. This volunteer for podcast, volunteer for webinars take part. If you if you’ve got experience that you can share, give something back and often Well, I’m too busy. Er Well, yeah, but by giving back, you don’t know what other opportunity will beget you, the more you’re out there seen as professional as how do you become a thought leader where you contribute take part? I’ve hosted around her. I’ve been paid to host round tables of CEOs of businesses because they’ve seen me speak and say, well, you know, we didn’t do this. Yeah, we do that. I guess what, That’s another company paying me to host a roundtable and I’m there with about 7, 8, 9 CEOs of businesses and I’m not there to sell my stuff or do anything like that.
Guess what? You build some report during that session and afterwards they all connect with you can you just spent an afternoon together and I’ve had conversations follow on from that leading to business where I’ve reached out, yes, have a coffee. So there’s so many things you can do if you choose to the, you know, the world is, you’re always too so to speak with social build your personal brand, look credible, contribute, write a blog, put yourself out there, but don’t expect to get immediate value back. Don’t expect the floodgates to open. It takes time, but as soon as it starts happening, it gets a little bit addictive to be honest, because if you can contribute and I’ve seen the value now and doing this in contributing and doing this and I’ve been up middle of the night for Australian podcast or panels because actually you don’t know who’s gonna see it, You don’t know who’s going to engage or opportunity it’s gonna bring. But if you only do it because you know exactly the gratification of getting immediately. You never do anything. You only do your day job and what you get paid for.
If you’re not paying me too, I’m not doing it, then you don’t forget this. Don’t expect the stuff to come back to you, you create your own luck and this is part of the way of doing it. And the beautiful world that we live in gives you that opportunity to reach the globe and to create opportunities you didn’t expect for someone who is, let’s say not doing anything on their online reputation. How long would you say it would take them? Well that’s the million dollar question. Right. So firstly it’s not about taking a week off and doing that. This is something you nurture and it’s lots of small pieces of effort. So for example I’ll quite often do stuff and I’ll be sat here watching the TV. And you can have your laptop there and you can spin out it’s not rocket science and complex stuff where you need to be blinkered away in a pivot table in a spreadsheet like it’s pretty simplistic stuff. And number one hit I’d give his plagiarise look at what other people do and borrow the ideas because there’s not copyright going to look at my profile.
I’m not saying it’s perfect. I’m constantly tuning and coming up with ideas but have a look, have a look at how I’ve structured and where I put images and how I make it more interesting. And also how you do the content. I constantly home and find tricks of how to do this. And I started now I’m in a position where I do write blogs that get published. And often I’ll write a blog because something’s happened. I think there’s a story about customer experience. I just had write, write a blog on it. It could be 400 words, write something? Put that content out there? People will comment and it gets you in the practice of doing it. but you’ve got to start somewhere, don’t see it as the mountain that you’ve got to jump straight to the top of Everest. Think you’ve got to start, you want to get to the top so you take a few steps and tomorrow you take a few more steps it’s spread out, but it’s constant small nurturing you bought a plant water. It too many people buy the plant linked, you know on social, they create their profile and then they don’t touch it for five years and the number of profiles I look at where I go, okay let’s see what they contact details are.
And LinkedIn, the links they’ve got are a company, they work for five years ago. So you’re linking back to your old company that takes two minutes to change. That says to me, you don’t even know what’s in there. You’re not really adept at this stuff. Yeah, I think more and more people are valuing it. So I think more and more people, I think, You know, 100% on the same page as you. So as you say, I think it’s the slight edge and I mean how many people, I don’t know whether you have this type of data or whether it’s just anecdotal, but how many people do you think are, you know, doing the same thing as you will, I would and it’s going to be a bit of an estimate of stuff I read that. I would say it’s a, in terms of doing it really, really properly and caring and getting it, it’s a very low percent. And even if I go borderline, it’s 5%, maybe it’s low percentage just because the volume of people are on these platforms, right? So if you, you know, even if to your point, well, what if loads of people start doing it, we’ll get guess what, what if we end up with 10% of people really doing a good job of it.
Well, do you want to be in the 10% That stand out? You wanna be in the top 10 or you want to be in the bottom 90? You know, it doesn’t take much to do it, it doesn’t take cash. You don’t have to go and spend. It’s all in your control tricks. I do. If I give one tip and trick if people look at it and go, well, how do I do some of this stuff, go look at a site such as fiber or five squid. If you wanna get nice images done or you want to get your profile picture and dumb edited and you’re not, you’re not buffet with graphics programs. I do a lot of stuff on there for social. So I’ll go on there and that’s how I need. You’ll see some images. If you look at my social feed, you’ll see some good, animated videos and things such as this And they start on £5 the gig economy. It’s like the eBay for people with skills, I don’t know, photoshopped, but if I want to get something really neat done for a blog I’ve written, it’s quite easy to go on there, have a quick look around and then face in order for £5. Guess what comes back? Usually within a day or two. Uh, someone’s done all the work for me somewhere around the world, some graphic design in their bedroom, who’s earning their own money off this site has done it for me and thank you very much.
And I’ve got tons of content I share that’s been created on that platform deeply. So it’s like, it’s like you’re outsourced marketing department, but very affordable even for you as an individual, let alone a business. Mm, interesting. And how long would you say you’ve been doing it in terms of, you know, doing it? Well, probably if I said where it really tip the balance probably the last three or four years when I started to realise the impact and started to take real care before I was just doing what I thought was right and putting the effort in at that point, I started then looking at actually reading blogs and looking at content that people put out, look at what other people do. Why didn’t I do that before? Why haven’t I been using that part of the platform? It sat there for me to use. So if you look at my profile now you’ll see against each of my job roles. There will be whether it be awards or where I spoke an event. The videos attached, it’s making it richer and some of it is the platforms have developed to allow you to do more things on them now that you couldn’t do seven or eight years ago.
So is making use of the capability that the platform is allowed to do, Whether that be Instagram social, you know, they’re all they’re all honing themselves Instagram stories wasn’t there originally, for example. So lots of things you can do is making use of those. I’m still looking today, there’s still bits on the platforms. I’ve got my list too. I haven’t really figured out how you use that as best but having a time to look at it yet. But I was I want to be using them to the maximum from what I need them for to shine to look the best you can, which attracts more connections, more people too. And I’ve had five or six connection invites today because and I think because by their phrasing I went on a linked in live, someone was talking yesterday and I took part right and I posted a comment and a question that came up on the screen and then took a screen grab repurposing content of that with my comment on it, and then re shared it on LinkedIn afterwards, copying it, tagging in the people who were on the, who were running it, guess what they shared and commented. And then other people did. And suddenly I had quite a few connections this morning from people in the arena of that event, which was to do around content marketing.
I’ll be great to connect. Some of them said, be great so soon. And the thing, Yes. And your comment? Really good. Can I connect by making new connections at senior level, through commenting on someone else’s content that someone else’s event? Have you got any thoughts on getting on new social platforms early? Yeah, I do it because of what I’m in, right? So, there’s a new one called Frive – I think it’s F R I V E. There’s so many popping up that purport to be, we’re gonna be the next Facebook or whatever and you never know nothing. Nothing’s appeared yet. That suddenly TikTok came out, right, and I’m on TikTok more so I can just understand the platform. My daughter is very keen to being picked up, but we’re not letting out because of the age, but my friends are on there. It’s not familiar sort of stuff, But um, so I tend to go on the newer platforms as they appear so that I can understand them and just create professionalism and profile. But I focus on the ones that arriving to us. But I’m not, I haven’t did anything come out yet, but I would say my gosh, that’s the one that’s gonna storm the world.
We’ve, we’ve got some of the audio and video ones that come, you know, that are appearing uh, right, disrupting a little bit of people’s thoughts are more people who have gone here now, you know, Facebook. So LinkedIn live appeared not so long ago, which I’ve got an account for and I’ll get around to trying at some point. So they’re all trying to develop either even the existing platforms to repurpose themselves to the way people are behaving now. But you know, who would have said Tic Tac was gonna go where when it first appeared for? You can only do this very short video, like a twitter version of YouTube really? And look at how explosive that has been. Everyone seems to be talking about clubhouse at the moment. Yeah, that’s the one that everyone seems. Is it, is it fad? Is it because well, remote or, And I’ve been on a couple of sessions on there and I don’t know, I’m not going to report just because I’m part of it too. I’d love to which one you put you by stopping if you can, I don’t, there are so many and the clubhouse is the one that you’re absolutely right.
That is being talked about. Where is it going? My guess would be if it gets momentum is one of the big boys will buy it. We’ll see Facebook, someone who just step in and go, we’ll have that as part of our portfolio will be that, that that’s what I expect. It will go if you come up with something good in social that the big boys haven’t done they want, why would they replicate it? Just buy it in interesting. Can you share what your goals are at the moment? Yeah. My goals at the moment are to drive the growth of the business that I’m in. I’m responsible for sales marketing. So which is, which is a good piece because it helps me bridge what we’ve been talking about because often the challenges for businesses I find are this whole social, this whole social world and personal brand and social selling and as blurred sales and marketing because typically and traditionally that would have been in the remit of marketing, but now you’ve got individuals doing stuff and content contribution. And I witnessed, I’ve been at events before go. They’re talking about this and listening to people the debates around marketing police.
Well, yeah, we don’t let the people do that. That’s marketing stuff. So you’ve just got you’ve got 50 salespeople, they want 10 salespeople down, three whatever and you’ve just a ball and chain around the ankle of yet. Don’t get involved. We don’t, we don’t want to be leveraging this to the best. We’re gonna slow you down because that’s the way the world used to be and it’s marketing’s domain. And then on the flip side you’ve got people who, you know, I’m lucky to own both where no, this is an overall thing. Like there’s marketing, corporate brand great. There’s a job there to drive leads people to your website, um, partnership, marketing alliance, but all that stuff and creating content out from the company. But then you’ve got these individuals that you should coach and nurture, but they don’t work for marketing. Well I bridge both. So I solved that problem. But too often that’s why we hear often that sales and marketing, you know, the knuckles together. I’m not quite aligning and that’s my remote, that’s my room where they shouldn’t do that. Well, it’s get rid of that and just get on with what, what engages the customer to engage with you.
The drive lead to drive business and that’s where my focus is to have that. I’m putting in place and half the teams in place and just, I’ve got, I’m waiting for a couple of people to join up with a whole sales and marketing team in place and now it’s to drive the engine and coach them and provide them the tools to execute on that in the way that the new world demands. Okay. You mentioned social selling in your answer because selling is quite a I don’t know for whatever reason people have their subjective opinions on what selling is. What is social selling? Yeah. Good questions. And the name itself is a misnomer. But that’s what that’s what the industry is monitored. It. Social selling should be called in my opinion, using social media as a way to engage with prospective clients and turn and gain conversations. Right? People think and I talk about social we couldn’t do so our product wouldn’t sell over social. That’s not what it’s about. It’s not about taking orders or putting something up on Instagram which takes them to a page and they buy gadget or the latest T shirt or whatever it is, it’s about.
If my audiences on social and I want to have a conversation with them and depending on your that conversation might be electronic, it might be something whether you bring you bring them to your website, you take them through a journey traditional marketing to the point where they want to engage and buy something electronically and automated. Great! What could be in B. Two B something where actually I will have a conversation with you. I want to talk to you as the head of marketing or the head of HR or the CIA or whatever. My practical services. But if you can pick the phone up, do it. If you can pick the phone up and get a conversation like the old world do it. But too often I hear. Well yeah, we just can’t a lot of people we can’t get hold of. Okay, so what do you do? Alternatively you just keep calling? Well your alternate is you can use social selling and social selling is for example, if I want to engage with the business and I want to talk to the sales lead leader there and we we’ve had no contact with a way of doing it. It’s not happening. Like the shortcut doesn’t work. Robin give up.
Why would I not? For example, if we create a blog, if we create a blog, perhaps I could reach out to them and we published the blog and I tagged them in a tag them in with three or four other people piers of. There’s maybe people are even connected with and I’m connected with and we welcome your opinion on this as other value sales leaders. What if they then comment, don’t reach out, sonny sells them. I might comment back or like they’re posting a great point. But what about its authentic conversation? What you’re looking to do is get engagement through to a point at which it is comfortable to connect and comfortable to speak and it works. It’s proven to work. I’ve done it when I present privately. I cite real examples with screenshots, but to protect the innocent. I wouldn’t use names on here, but real examples where not only have I followed that process with major brands. See IOS, and there’s one particular one, a major household brand.
That CEO I remember reaching back to me and commenting on things and engaging a little bit and then I smiled on the day when oh I’m gonna linked in in by, they’ve invited me to connect, they’ve invited me to connect with them, not, I’ve forced the issue and I want to sell it to you and it took about six weeks maybe, but I wasn’t getting to them anyway, because everyone is trying to get hold of that senior person and everyone is doing the same route of just hammering phones and emails and they’re just blanking it all. So I came in through the side window and I did it slowly. What happened is if you think real world, I walked past their side window every day and I just waved with a nice smile. No agenda. High morning to at some point where it’s like, oh my gosh, you have you seen that jam down there? It turned out of conversations with the window. They talk to me because it feels familiar. They don’t really know me, right?
So a little bit more where I got to see you every morning, what would you do? It’s like a coffee event? It was an allergy. The real world. If you go to an event, a conference. Real world. Pre Covid, post Covid and you’re getting coffee at the machine, you’re all there for some conference. And someone stood next to you getting coffee, you don’t turn to them and go hi, my name is Ian, I’m from such and I’m from one upstairs and this is what we do and I wonder if I could sell it to you negative, walk off, like blanking you and avoid you the rest of the day. What do you do you say? Oh my gosh, you didn’t come and do energy. How did you get in this one? I’m a nightmare getting in here and I was right, why the train? Oh I didn’t, I drove. Okay. Have a bit of chitchat, warm, gentle stuff. Right? You may not even say where you’re from and say what you what you’re looking forward to today? I’m gonna do this session, this session. Okay, guess what you bump into a bit later social, you bump into a bit later. And so how you doing? How did you find this morning? Oh great, a bit short. Might get a sandwich. I’m gonna get one of that. Okay, you nurture, right? And at some point in the day I invariably say, that’s happened a few times.
Okay. Oh, God. Really joined today’s long day that what do you do? They just they just sent you an invite to connect. Right, what do you do? Well, we helped transform the productivity of businesses, sales teams to enable them to get greater outcomes of sales to. Really, how do you do that conversation started now but it’s naturally progressed into it. That’s how you need to behaviour and that’s what social selling is about. It’s doing the same behaviour on social if you do it right. What happens is you get a connect, you get that level of connection to the point where you go what? I’m in London next week. I don’t you in London you’re not around for a coffee. I or I wonder if you’d be open to a phone call. We followed each other. We keep bumping into each other. Will be open to a 15 minute chapter. See if there’s any more connection between us. We are. Yeah, feels like you know each other now. Right. But you’ve never met. That’s what social selling is. It’s using social platform to create a real world conversation.
Once you get the real world conversations, social selling has done its job and got you to the table of the conversation in the first place. Doesn’t replace selling techniques or cold calling it complements it where it’s not working great explanation. So Ian Moyce, where is the best place for people to find you? Well, that’s the easy one, right because I referenced earlier by accident, so thank you for that. It’s ianmoyse.co.uk will take you to my LinkedIn profile and Ian Moyce dark cloud will take you to my Twitter profile, both of which are places I share. Hopefully insightful and thought leadership content on cloud computing, sales leadership and things such as personal branding and social selling.
Well, thank you very much for all the value you provided today.
You’re more than welcome. Thank you so much for inviting me.