Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. Hey, thanks for being here. Before we jump into today's episode, I want to let you know that today's guest, Daniel Disney, his new podcast, Social Selling, has just joined the Guru podcast network. Daniel is the number one ranked most influential sales expert on LinkedIn. And his new podcast, Social Selling with Daniel Disney is all about LinkedIn tips, all about social selling. It is awesome. Check it out. Look for him on all the platforms and gurupodcastnetwork.com. all right, here's today's episode. We are here and we have one of the greatest guests of all time. Here we have Daniel Disney. Now, if you don't know who Daniel Disney is, okay, let me tell you a little bit about this guy. I mean, he can sell, they say, ice to Eskimos or whatever. He literally could probably do it and he could do it on LinkedIn. He is a rock star on LinkedIn. Let me tell you a little bit about him before. Before I bring him on stage here. All right, so Daily Sales is his company page and it has over 1 million followers on LinkedIn. You know how hard it is to do that. His content gets viewed by more than 10 million people monthly on LinkedIn. Okay. He has trained over 50,000 salespeople globally. He is the best selling author of the ultimate LinkedIn sales guide, the ultimate LinkedIn messaging guide. He knows what he's talking about. He is here. I'm stoked. Daniel, welcome to do this, not that.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I think. Do you know what? We. We met in Austin, Texas last year and we are like on the same level of energy. And your passion for all things email and marketing is exactly what I have for all things LinkedIn and social selling. So I cannot wait to dig into it today.

Amazing. Absolutely 100%. I've drank way too many Celsiuses to get excited for this. So I am. I am ready. So I want to jump right into it. So your secret sauce is getting the most out of LinkedIn being able to sell on LinkedIn. Right. First of all, how did that happen? How did you become this LinkedIn machine?

Well, I mean, funny story. I've worked in sales My entire working life, from knocking doors, selling kitchens, got into, into corporate B2B sales kind of at the right time. So just when LinkedIn was starting to really grow, about 12 years ago, I started using LinkedIn, started to find customers on it, and it was just bit by bit finding new ways to leverage it as a sales tool. And as I started to get really good at it and generated quite a lot of results back then, people that I knew or worked with started coming up to me and saying, Dan, can you show us how you did that? Can you come and speak to our sales team and show them how to use LinkedIn? And that eventually grew into, you know, what I do now. But I think what I bring to the table is the sales mindset that I have with a bit of creativity and the marketing knowledge I've picked up over the years as well. But LinkedIn's a phenomenal tool and it's still underutilized by so many companies. So my passion is showing them how to unlock it.

So let me ask you, and then we're going to dig into the specific tactics that everyone's going to get so much out of. But some people would say LinkedIn, now that has over a billion people on LinkedIn, right? Am I too late to the game to really get sales generated out of LinkedIn, to get lead generated out of LinkedIn? Is it now just like a branding thing or is that not right?

No, I think the opportunity is still really ripe. Obviously maybe in the next three, five, seven years that opportunity is going to start to shrink a little bit. But I would say 90 of the companies I work with and 90 of the sales teams there are barely scratching the surface. So, yeah, LinkedIn's getting bigger and it's getting noisier, but it is full of your target decision makers, it's full of leaders, and they're using it. More of them are using it more often. And so there are even more opportunities to, to find them and start conversations.

Okay, good. So I'm not going to bail on LinkedIn. That's good news. So now let's dig into the quick wins. What are we going to do to get people to get the Most out of LinkedIn? And I know you like to focus a lot on personalization. What do you mean by personalization on LinkedIn?

Do you know what? It is sad, Jay, that we even have to talk about this, but the majority of messages sent on LinkedIn, as I'm sure you see in emails, are not personalized or they're sort of non authentically Personalized, So it. It really shouldn't be such a big thing, but it is, because there are a lot of lazy salespeople and sales teams out there. The reason it's so important is because when you do it, it opens doors. If you get a generic spammy copy and pasted message, I guarantee you, 99.9% of people are going to ignore it, delete it, block it. But if you send a message that's really personalized, if I sent you a message, Jane, I was like, jay, I loved that post you shared on LinkedIn today. Those tips you shared were phenomenal. I've shared them with the team and I just open a natural conversation. There's more of a chance you'll actually read it. There's even more of a chance you might reply to me, which increases the chance we may eventually do some business together. It's all about having real conversations with real people.

So when you say personalization, it's not just saying hey and mentioning their name, Is it taking the time and whoever it is that you're about to reach out to, looking at their page, finding a post, you actually like involved in doing all that? Because that takes time. But is that what you're saying? You have to invest that that time?

It is. I'm all for quality over quantity with these things, and I know a lot of companies will come back and they'll be like, but we need to scale it, we need to automate it. We need to, you know, get numbers. But from my experience and from, you know, all the companies I've worked with, honestly taking that little bit of extra time, and it's not a lot of extra time, really. I could look at your profile, Jack, and look at your activity. There are other depths I can go into if, you know, I need to. But on a base layer, I could really personalize a message in 30 to 60 seconds. It's not a huge amount of time, and I guarantee you'll get more results than mass spamming out 1, 200 copy and pasted messages where you're not going to get any return.

So when you're doing outreach, though, and you're doing personalization, are we talking only to people that you're already connected with or. I mean, I get inundated, as everybody does, with, you know, the mailbox or whatever on LinkedIn that I don't really check as often people I'm not connected to. And is there any way to penetrate people's awareness for people that you're not connected to? How do you do outreach to people you're not connected to.

Well, the reality is it's through Sales Navigator, which comes at a cost and it's, it's not cheap, but it allows you to message people you're not connected to. Now, an InMail, which is what that is, is even colder than a cold call. Because if you get an InMail, you know someone's paid 50 to 60 pounds a month to send you that they're going to try and send you something. But you, there is a way you can make it work, which is through even more personalization. This is my favorite quote, Jay. The more you make your message about them, the more chance you'll have of getting a reply. And Whether it's an InMail, whether it's a written message, a voice note, video, whatever it may be, it's all about making it about them. And you can be connected. I would recommend you try and connect because it opens more doors. But if they're very senior and you can't get them to accept your connection request, InMail is a phenomenal tool when used right again. The problem is Most salespeople use InMails to copy and paste really spammy messages and then wonder why no one replies.

That's super helpful. And let me ask you about a different tactic. We haven't talked about this, so I don't know where you fall on this. Let's say there's somebody that you really want to connect with. Okay, you're not connected with them, but you're following them and you're seeing them post stuff. Is there value to consistently trying to comment on their posts and then connect with them? I mean, is that a play that you can do 100.

But again, with all these things, do it authentically. So don't just write great post on every single post. They do, you know, try and contribute. So, Jay, great post. Here's my thoughts. And don't do it every single post, but maybe every other post. So they, you know, they subtly see you consistently. But I'd add an extra tip to that, and that is to go and connect with other people in their company. So let's say they're the, the CRO. Well, go and connect with some of the marketing team, the sales team, some of the leaders, people that are maybe lower down, more likely to be open to connect. So eventually when you do go to connect with them, they've seen your name coming up on their content, they see that you're connected with some of their colleagues and team, that massively increases the.

Chance they'll accept that is secret sauce right there. I like that idea. That's a good one. I know what you mean though, because then when you see that, oh, you're connected with four other people they're connected with, okay, I'll connect with that person. That is a great, great tip. Let me ask you another thing that I don't do. I've never done. I don't even know how to do it, which is audio and video messages in LinkedIn. Is it worthwhile? How do you do it?

What is it? Hands down, the easiest, lowest hanging fruit sales people have right now. I did a poll, Jay. I think there was about 7,000 people voted, of which 94 of those 7,000 people are not sending any audio or video messages right now. I mean, that's phenomenal. That's like working back in sales when the telephone was first invented and cold calls first started. It's a huge opportunity and it takes your written message. And if you send an audio message, you can add tone so they can hear my voice, they can hear me smiling, they can hear my energy, or even further with a video, they can see me talking to them. And my eye contact and my body language. It adds layers of depth to messaging. That again helps you stand out. 94% of salespeople are sending written messages. So when your audio message or video message comes through, it stands out. There are still decision makers that have never received an audio message. So it's new, it's a novelty, it's engaging, and again, really low hanging fruit for sales teams.

How do you do it? Like, is there a platform? I mean, not that you're like, you know, plug in this platform or that platform, but go for it. Is there a platform to use that makes it easy?

The LinkedIn app on your phone is all you need, is that simple. And it is really easy to do. I mean, you are literally going to put a message. You're either holding down the microphone button or you're opening up to record a video. Really easy. And it's uncomfortable at first, I'll be honest. Like the first time you do it, it's not going to be too comfortable. But once you're used to it, it will be like everything else. And there are times now where an audio message is the easiest way for me to communicate with prospects, either as an initial cold message or even asking questions, building rapport, sometimes even closing, following up. You can use it for all areas.

So you see a higher reply rate when you use an audio message than when you don't. Yes, that's great. I don't know why. I've literally never done. I even realized you could do it in the app. So I'm going to immediately start doing this. Let me ask you one other thing and then we'll get on some nonsense. I saw a stat the other day that said only 5% of LinkedIn users actually post on LinkedIn. 95% are just there watching everybody else post. I know that you post a lot, but when you are advising your clients or whatnot, how do you get people into the comfort zone of saying you got to be out there posting, you got to be one of the people producing content? Like, you agree that everybody should be out there posting, right?

Oh, I mean, yes, absolutely. Yes and no. I guess because posting content is a challenge, it might not be for everyone. And there's a lot of stuff you can do on LinkedIn without posting content, but I'll absolutely always advocate it. But it's a difficult bridge to cross. You know, I'm not a marketer. I was a salesperson who was making cold, cold calls when suddenly I stumbled on LinkedIn and suddenly I was like, oh, maybe I should post content. It's weird, it's scary, it's confusing. So what I try to do and whether it's with books or training, is to try and help hold their hands and show them, look, here are some easy ways, here are some ideas. Why not put a poll out to your audience and ask a question that you think your prospect might find interesting? Why not write your top tips for 2024 for your target decision maker? So I might do a post. If I were a VP of marketing in 2024, here are the 10 things I would be prioritizing. Bum, bum, bum, bum. And it twists the mindset of, oh, I need to post content. I don't know what to post. I'm just going to promote my company. You know, I don't really want to take a selfie. And you just build people up to it with some easier, low hanging post opportunities. And as their confidence builds, before you know it, they're taking selfies, they're doing videos, they're hosting live sessions. Confidence builds with time, but it's a process and I think we all just need to acknowledge it's not easy or natural for a lot of salespeople.

I think it's so important to say it's not natural. It's not even natural. I've been now posting for a year or two and it's still not natural. But you know what? That consistency really gets you connected with people and you meet people. And it's mind blowing to me that we have access to this tool called LinkedIn that people just don't take advantage of enough. I know that you do, and that's awesome. So let's get into some chaos here. Let's forget about all the LinkedIn, all the sales stuff. We're going to get into the segment called since you didn't ask, now you are a Game of Thrones person. By the way, I have never seen a single episode of Game of Thrones. You have to sell me on why I should care about dragons. Because I don't care.

It is one of the most well made series, bar the last couple of series. But, you know, it is one of the most amazing series. I watch it yearly. This is how sad I am. I watch the whole thing at least once a year and it is comfort watching for me. But it's, it's.

Love it. That's embarrassing on so many levels. All right, I might have to try. But I want to know something. Besides your annual watching of Game of Thrones, which I've never heard another human being do, what is Daniel Disney watching now? Because Game of Thrones is over. So what are you watching like now?

So one of my favorite other much lighter series is, is Rick and Morty. I love humorous tv, whether it's Family Guy, south park and Rick and Morty is such a high level of that type of entertainment. And there was a new series coming out. So for me, that's kind of my, my good background telly while I'm working. That and on a completely other end of the spectrum, Friends. I was brought up with friends. I love Friends. It's easy watching. So I can just put on Netflix, have that on while I'm writing or whatever I'm doing. And it's just, it's, it's nice and easy.

Yes, Very, very sophisticated stuff. He didn't say like Masterpiece Theater or, you know, the crown. It's so wrong of me to even bring up the crown just because you're British. Dude, I bring up the crown. That's not right.

That's like I probably, I probably should watch it fair. I've never watched the crown. So there we go.

There you go, you see? Well, you know it all. You know the real story. So. All right, let me ask you this. Two things. Any last piece of piece of advice for humanity and how do people find you? Where do they track you down? They want to get all in in your world.

Okay, My advice for humanity is try and keep balance. If it's the one thing I work hard to do, is balance. Work, life, family, yourself. Just try and keep everything in balance. It's not always easy, but at least be aware of it. We're all got multiple spinning plates and if you can try and keep them all spinning, life becomes a lot easier. And where can you find me on LinkedIn, obviously. Daniel Disney. There are a few Daniel Disney's out there. Look for the one in the red T shirt and you'll find me there. I, I have a website, I have books, YouTube, all those sort of things. But LinkedIn is where I'm at every day, trying to help as many people as I can.

All right, everybody needs to stop what they're doing. They need to follow Daniel. We'll put it all in the show notes. You can find him. Follow the daily sales, get his book all things Daniel. The guy knows what he's doing. Thank you for being here, Daniel. This was awesome. You rock.

I loved it. Thank you for having me. You did it.

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