Episode Sponsored By: Death Wish Coffee
Our guest this week is Jamie Shanks, CEO of Sales for Life. Jamie is a world leading Social Selling expert, responsible for pioneering the space.
Jamie Shanks has trained 1,000s of sales professionals from Fortune 500 companies to solopreneurs.
He’s here today to discuss how to build your social following in a real, organic and sustainable way. But what about the next step. Jamie shares how to transfer that social following into actionable business.
This episode is brought to you by, Deathwish Coffee,the world’s strongest coffee and the only brew we drink when we do the show. It’s the only choice for the true Sell or Diehard!
On today’s show…
7:17 – Why aren’t more salespeople utilizing the tools social media offers?
11:44 – Earning solid leads and connections through online brand presence
16:49 – How a mentor changed Jamie’s life forever
17:55 – Separating the micro and macro strategy of selling
19:30 – Create an enemy online
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FULL TRANSCRIPTION
Jamie Shanks: Well, from a Facebook Live, I don’t think that the average seller has begun there. Basically, I’ve hardly even begun there.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, obviously you have a face for radio. But I’m talking about-
Jen Gluckow: Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Sorry. Where do we start this? And answers don’t matter, we’re having a good time.
Jen Gluckow: He couldn’t wait to get in here.
Doug Branson: You need sales balls to make sales calls.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I’m Tweeting that puppy. Okay. Hi everybody, I’m Jeffrey Gitomer, welcome to Sell or Die. You may know me as the author of the Little Red Book of Selling, and to my right-
Jen Gluckow: I’m Jen Gluckow, founder and CEO of Sales in a New York Minute.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And this is a podcast that’s going to teach you how to make more sales now, better. You’re going to join 50,000 other diehards, which is kind of an amazing number.
Doug Branson: Record March month for downloads.
Jen Gluckow: Whoo. I think we’re going to break 50,000 this month.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, this is March Madness from a sales perspective, even though Villanova will take it in the NCAAs. I have a feeling today, Jen.
Jen Gluckow: What’s the feeling?
Jeffrey Gitomer: I’m feeling social.
Jen Gluckow: Are you?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah.
Jen Gluckow: Well, listen, for those of you just joining us for the first time, I just want to let you know, there is no second place in sales. And so our podcast is going to help you come in first.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right, and the people who don’t listen are losers.
Jen Gluckow: Oooh.
Doug Branson: Hopefully they’re your competition.
Jen Gluckow: That’s right, that’s right. Do not share this with your competition. But do share this with everyone who you know that could benefit from listening to a sales and personal development advice.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Sellordiepodcast.com will get you all the episodes or you can go on your favorite podcast distribution channel.
Doug Branson: I feel like after you listen to this show enough, you’re going to be so confident as a salesperson you can share this show with your competition, because you know you’re going to beat them anyway.
Jen Gluckow: And if you don’t know who that is, that is our producer, who is amazing. The famous Mr. Doug Branson. Oh, we got the clap, I love it.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I want to tell you something. We had an interesting thing happen this past week. One of our customers, who you may erroneously call a client, actually recommended that one of his employees listen to a Sell or Die episode to get his attitude straight.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, this was cool. He came over for breakfast and first of all, he was like, “So, I know you guys are going to Paris.” It’s like wow, “I listen to every episode,” it’s so cool. And I love that you guys know what we’re up to and what we’re doing.
Doug Branson: It’s when he knows what seat on the plane you’re going to be on.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, that’s a little scary, that’s a little scary. No, we’re good on that one. Anyways, and he said, “I own this business, I have eight employees that I’m managing and one of them was really struggling the other day. She was all upset because she lost a deal and I told her, go back and listen to the specific Sell or Die episode because it’s going to help you.” And when he told us that, I was just honored. It was so freaking cool.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, very nice. Oh, my god.
Jen Gluckow: I love these sound effects. Doug is amazing, guys.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So, feeling social is like feeling groovy. You’re on the internet everyday, every one of you-
Jen Gluckow: Wait a minute, you’re feeling social, does that mean you’re going to invite our neighbors over?
Jeffrey Gitomer: No. No, no, no. We’re talking internet social where no one knows you’re a dog. I think that it’s important to understand to maximize your productivity on your instrument of choice, your phone. You’re on there screwing around all day long anyway, looking to see if your old high school girlfriend got fat or something. And you are wasting your time if you’re not socially involving your customers and your prospects and your connections in your business community or in your local community.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah. Talking about being on your phone too much, right now I have felt like I am on my phone too much, so I just downloaded this app called Moment. And it helps you stay present in the moment and actually, when you’re on your phone too much and you can set the parameters. Jeffrey, why are you going on your phone?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Because I want to get Moment.
Jen Gluckow: Okay, cool. So it tells you, “You’ve been on your phone now for 15 minutes, like, fool, what are you doing.” And I can either make it go away and say, “No, I actually need to be on my phone, I’m responding to something or whatever,” or I can say, “Wow, I’ve been on my phone for 15 minutes, what could I have done with those 15 minutes instead. Let me go be more productive.”
Doug Branson: Right, it confronts you with hey, what have you been doing with your time on the phone. Because you can spend a lot of time on your phone and also be constructive. I want to go back to something Jeffrey said about being socially active in terms of your business on your phone. I think a lot of people don’t know, and that’s why we’ve got a great guest coming up that’s going to help you.
Jen Gluckow: That is right. Very good segue, Doug. So we have an amazing guest coming up. His name is Jamie Shanks.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And he is a Sales for Lifer.
Jen Gluckow: And the cool thing is he went from virtually no followers, maybe about 500 followers, to a massive following that has created business success for him.
Jeffrey Gitomer: He put himself in the middle of a hot market and created a leadership opportunity by simply blogging and posting and showing up at big networking events and giving speeches. I mean, he put himself in the leadership position, literally.
Jen Gluckow: He was persistent, he was consistent, he’s totally dedicated to gaining followers online, and he’s going to talk about how he did it and how you can do it too. Take a listen.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So we’re joined today by a foreigner. Jamie Shanks looks American, but he’s actually Canadian, which means he eats a lot of bacon and drinks undrinkable coffee. But his company-
Jen Gluckow: He didn’t drink any coffee this morning.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I know, I know.
Jamie Shanks: Our beer is a thousand times better than yours.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh my god. Right, you’re like a Molson Golden kind of guy or something?
Jamie Shanks: No, no, that’s like heavenly beer to an American. That’s our toilet water.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh my god. Okay, so, that and he hasn’t seen the Stanley Cup in 30 years. But please welcome the CEO, founder, and king of Sales for Life, the great Jamie Shanks.
Jamie Shanks: Thank you so much for having me.
Jen Gluckow: We’re glad you’re here.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, you look very nice today, too, by the way, for those of you who are listening.
Jen Gluckow: I like the handkerchief.
Jamie Shanks: I’m all looks, no substance.
Jen Gluckow: Nah. Don’t believe that.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So, tell me a little bit what Sales for Life does.
Jamie Shanks: So, Sales for Life is a sales training company focused primarily on social selling and digital selling. We’re the largest in the world that has helped hundreds of thousands of sellers move from a state of analog to a state of digital. From global companies all the way down to the SMB.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Are most people social selling reluctant?
Jamie Shanks: They’re not necessarily reluctant. I think most sellers know they need to change. The market’s telling them they need to change. They just have no idea where to begin, nor is there enablement or their front line sales manager helping them in any way to make that change.
Jeffrey Gitomer: They don’t know how themselves.
Jamie Shanks: Correct. And a lot of the problem stems with the front line sales manager, Gen X, Baby Boomer, was what you would call a digital native. Not born a digital person. They don’t know where to begin either. So, it’s the blind leading the blind.
Jen Gluckow: There’s so much changing in social selling. How do you keep up with what’s changing in order to be able to train the people you’re training, or are there principles that are consistent that you stick by?
Jamie Shanks: So there are core principles in our methodology we call FEED. Find, engage, educate, and develop. And that’s agnostic to any platform. But out secret sauce is that we crowdsource our curriculum. And we crowdsource it by having 100,000 sellers teaching and learning and growing, and they’re constantly suggesting new best practices, what-if scenarios, based on their local markets. So a sales professional in Sydney, Australia is learning something different than a sales professional in San Francisco. And inside our system, they’re just teaching and bringing back to the sales community a new way of doing things, such as video is becoming hot whereas six months to a year ago, sales professionals weren’t talking about that.
Jeffrey Gitomer: How about Live?
Jamie Shanks: Well, from a Facebook Live, I don’t think the average seller has begun there. Basically, I’ve hardly even begun there. Well, obviously, you have a face for radio. But I’m talking about-
Jen Gluckow: Jeffrey.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Sorry. But, the real question is, where is it now, and then where will it evolve to so that as a person that is getting involved in social selling, and for me, I want somebody who is involved in social selling so they can be a face-to-face hero when they arrive in the store. Because they’re going to look me up first.
Jamie Shanks: Here’s where it’s evolving. It’s evolving to where I want to evolve myself out of a job. The words social selling should not and will not exist in 5 to 10 years. It will just be called selling. The only reason we’ve given it its own niche name is for Google searches. But at the end of the day, it would be like if I’m in this room right now saying, “I’m going to teach you email selling.” You’d laugh and say that’s ridiculous. The job is to apply digital and social as part of your various cadence every day. Every deal, every day. Digital is just part of what you do.
Jen Gluckow: So it sounds like it’s not all of what you do, it’s just part of it. What else do you need to combine it with?
Jamie Shanks: Everything, whether it’s smoke signals all the way to mailing something to a buyer, whether it’s calling, emailing, face-to-face meetings. It is all under the umbrella of get the buyer’s attention. Sales. Digital is just infused into what I’m doing. So for myself, myself personally, I don’t typically place a first time call to somebody. I’ll connect with them socially and perhaps make them a personal video that I share with them via social or email. I like to use video as a way of introducing myself up-front. I’ll Tweet somebody to get their attention. I’ll use it as a call to action, to a phone call that I’ve placed to them. To me, there is no difference between digital and regular selling.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So you would direct message somebody and say, “Hey Bob, call me back?”
Jamie Shanks: 100%. I am not afraid to use Twitter as the new voicemail. Twitter is only 140 characters. For me, it’s a voicemail that leads to a different medium as my main call to action.
Jen Gluckow: I love it, because it’s a public message too, I’m assuming you don’t mean direct messages.
Jamie Shanks: I’ll do both.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And they’re going to 280 characters so you can be an ass with a whole lot more characters. Listen very carefully, because what Jamie’s saying is, the future of sales is your ability to combine yourself with online and digital. And face-to-face. Online, digital, face-to-face, that’s your new strategy for getting in front of that customer. Because you’re not going to make all online sales. At some point, somebody’s got to pick up the phone and do it, otherwise you’re Amazon and you don’t need anybody.
Jamie Shanks: My job is to take online to offline as fast as possible, but earn my right into the phone call. Earn my right into the boardroom. Because a buyer, yourself as a buyer, are horsetrading time for knowledge. My job is to provide enough knowledge you’re willing to trade me time.
Jen Gluckow: So, besides video, how do you earn that time online? What do you do to get it?
Jamie Shanks: For me, it has been about creating a strong enough brand presence that I would be invited in rather than asking for a meeting. That’s kind of level two, and the way that I did it was through influencer marketing. I recognized, five years ago, that Jeffrey has a database that’s 1000 times bigger than mine, yet everybody in his database is who I want to know. So I would start identifying up-front who are the people that are already in the boardroom. And I started sharing, liking, commenting, trying to surround myself with people like Jeffrey, who then, if he shared my stuff, his network lumped me into his little club. And then all of a sudden, I was part of the club. For whatever reason, they decided to do that, and then all of a sudden, people noticed what I was saying and doing as part of the sales community.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So you have a situation now where there’s older guys like me but younger like Jen, and she’s looking to build her brand and make certain that people find her online. What’s your strategy for her? What should she be doing?
Jamie Shanks: The coattails. For me, it was the number one strategy that I used. There’s two strategies that I used. Number one, influencer marketing. There is always somebody with a database or a network that I want, and so I am piggybacking on those people to work within their system to be introduced to their network. Part two is when we ended up developing a methodology around it called the sphere of influence. Every person has a first degree network that can be reverse engineered on LinkedIn that I know who used to work there, who works there today, who do they compete against, who are their friends and family, and I can reverse engineer that network to get what’s called social proximity. I can ask for referrals into the people that are closest to you. And I basically used those two strategies. Four years ago, I only had 500 LinkedIn connections. Now I have 12,000 and they’re all global vice presidents of sales because I just used one chess piece to get to the next chess piece.
Jen Gluckow: Jeffrey, I am starving. I need meat for dinner. Where do you want to go?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Any place they serve a Strassburger steak, Jen.
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Jeffrey Gitomer: I can tell you from personal experience that Strassburger steaks are amazing. Mouth-watering, delicious. Diehards, do you want a flavorful prime New York strip steak without having to go to New York? Well, how about something that’s like a bone-in or a rib steak. Come on. You can get anything you want at Strassburger and once you’ve tried their steaks, there’s no going back.
Jen Gluckow: Are you having trouble finding a gift for someone that has it all? Why not give the gift of amazing Strassburger steaks? Weddings, anniversaries, graduations, your favorite client, how about celebrating making a sale?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Sales red meat.
Jen Gluckow: Getting a Strassburger steak is a celebration.
Jeffrey Gitomer: You know, they serve the best steakhouses in New York City and around the country, and now you can have them right in your own home. Visit Strassburgersteaks.com right now, or call them! 2018428890. Call them right now, come on. 2018428890. And celebrate with steak.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So I’m going to give you a classic example that happened right here in this studio. Jeb Blount comes down to do a podcast with us. Jeb and Jen do their own thing at the table right out there. And interviewed one another, and Jeb loved what Jen was saying and put Jen up on his network. And what happened?
Jen Gluckow: I got thousands more followers. It was awesome. And I’m forever grateful to Jeb, so any time I see something great that he’s written, or anything that he’s written because it’s all great, I share it. I try to promote it.
Jamie Shanks: And Ken Krogue, president and CEO and founder of insidesales.com, did that for me. Five years ago, at the American Association of Inside Sales professionals event, he saw me speak up. I was in the audience, but I spoke up during a breakout session. He asked if I wanted to do an ebook together. I barely had a company, yet. Sure, I’ll do an ebook. It was, up until recently, the number one volume to produce or download ebook for insidesales.com. Had tens of thousands of downloads. I still get messages. “Oh, you’re 42 LinkedIn Tips ebook is amazing.” It’s five years old.
Jen Gluckow: Can we give our listeners a link to that ebook?
Jamie Shanks: I don’t even know if it exists anymore. But the long and the short is, I got lumped into Ken Krogue’s network and their database is 2.5, or at the time, 2.5 million sales professionals, was in their database.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Can’t hurt.
Jamie Shanks: No, can’t hurt.
Jen Gluckow: So what is the average salesperson do, though? Because we’re all trying to grow the same business, similar businesses. But a salesperson, let’s say they’re not selling speeches or courses-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oil futures, copy machines.
Jen Gluckow: Exactly. How do they grow on?
Jamie Shanks: I honestly believe there’s the micro and the macro strategy. I’m an account-based seller, and my company assigned me 25 accounts. That’s my today strategy, and then I’ll have my macro. So my micro strategy is I need to socially surround the champions, the decision makers, the influencers, of those 25 accounts. But at the same time, there is the long game. And that long game is, you may not be selling to those same 25 accounts for the next 30 years. I need to develop a network. Let’s say, I sold to IT. It’s not just the CIOs of those 25 accounts, but if I want to be able to sell to IT leaders globally, I need to learn about that market. I need to curate and create content that gets me in front of global CIOs, long-ball.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Now, let me throw something at you for salespeople that might be confused and say what do I write about. The answer is, if you’re selling financial plans, or life insurance, then you want to write about how to live longer. Or how to enjoy yourself in retirement. If you’re selling copy machines, then you might want to write about image, or how to increase your office productivity, or what happens when the copier breaks. So, you have to write about what the end consumer is looking at in outcome. And I want to know what happens in their real world, so that when I begin to write about it, and I share it with my contacts on LinkedIn or wherever, I might send it to them in the form of an email, magazine, or a video. Is that content good enough for them to share with another potential customer of mine?
Jamie Shanks: And when we started this process five years ago, we’ve blogged everyday, for five years. And when we started it, we had no followers, and we realized there was another marketing strategy that we could leverage. It was create an enemy online. A fictitious enemy. And we decided that enemy was going to be the cold call, because we knew that there was a huge camp of people that believed that cold calling was the only thing in the world, that it was the most important thing in the world. And it would create this visceral reaction out of people. So we attacked cold calling. Doesn’t mean that we think that cold calling is garbage or dead-
Jeffrey Gitomer: No, the truth is, wait a minute, you make cold calls.
Jamie Shanks: Exactly. And it’s funny. I’ve had that conversation with Jeb. We’d write content that will say cold calling is dead. But what we’re using it is a means to open up a dialogue, and that blog went from a couple readers to now a 100,000 readers daily, because we first attacked a problem that people were looking at online. And we beat the crap out of it. We just talked about cold calling for years.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So, Jamie’s the leader in Sales for Life, I think you need to go to his website. You need to go to his blog, obviously, because he’s going to give you the ins and outs of why cold calling is dead. Well, it’s not dead. It’s on life support, but it’s not dead.
Jamie Shanks: It’s just another medium of communication. It is not the medium of communication.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I’m not against it. But if I was going to cold call, I’d say, “Listen, my names Jeffrey Gitomer, can you Google me before we start this conversation?” And that way, you’d think, “Uh, okay.” So I want to thank you for coming all the way down from Canada to be here.
Jen Gluckow: Thank you.
Jamie Shanks: Are we going to feed my sled dogs before we head out?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Feed the sled dogs, but why don’t you let the people that are keeping the sled dogs know where they can find you? How can we find you?
Jamie Shanks: They can find me, obviously, on all social platforms. Jamie Shanks on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. And as well, salesforlife.com. That’s sales FOR life dot com.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And I want to thank you. Jenny, you want to thank him?
Jen Gluckow: Thank you so much.
Jamie Shanks: Thank you for having me.
Jeffrey Gitomer: You’re an absolutely exceptional dresser.
Jamie Shanks: Always win best-dressed awards.
Jeffrey Gitomer: If your content is as good as your dress, I think you’re probably going to rock the world. We wish you well.
Jamie Shanks: Thank you so much.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So, overall, I’m going to give that interview a gold. Because what he is saying is what’s happening right now in the marketplace, and he has positioned himself as a minute by minute leader because of the way he posts and how he constructed his whole platform. He’s positioned himself as a known expert. He obviously gets all kinds of speaking engagements, but it’s all based on his blogging.
Jen Gluckow: Well, yeah. He said he blogged consistently every day for five years, since the inception of his business. Every single day. Some people would say, “How do I think of something new to write about?” Or “What do I write about?” Or “I just made an article yesterday, who’s going to read it today?” And the consistency of that has been part of his traction.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, Jamie was too stupid to realize that somebody might not read the article so he wrote another one. And just understand, this kid is a brilliant marketeer, not just a brilliant social media person. He’s created his own audience, his own aura, his own brand, his own reputation, and he’s done it by consistency. If you write enough blogs, you got a book.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, but it doesn’t seem like he paid for these followers, or did something sketchy. He literally did these things that diehards, any of you, could do. It’s stuff that I’ve done. He talked about riding the coattails of someone else with the following that you want. He talked about blogging. These are things you can do.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Easily.
Jen Gluckow: Daily.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Exactly. And he was here, he’s a nice person. I felt he was a nice person, anyway.
Jen Gluckow: He’s a great person, for sure. So, let’s talk about this idea of creating a fictitious character online.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. Are you in favor of it?
Jen Gluckow: Well-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Dun dun dun, you have to give the answer in five seconds.
Jen Gluckow: I’m in favor of being genuine. And it’s hard for me to create a character that I don’t believe in. I do believe in creating controversy, and picking a stance, and choosing a side.
Jeffrey Gitomer: He’s creating his own dialogue, not by creating a fictitional character but rather by creating an opposing point of view. Because anyone who goes onto his social selling platform is going to say cold calling’s not dead. Oh yes, cold calling is dead. No it isn’t, yes it is, no it isn’t, yes it is. And what he’s done is given reasons for both. And they’re valid. Well, okay-
Jen Gluckow: He has chosen one side.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Right, and puts down the other guy.
Jen Gluckow: And he has chosen the side of cold calling is dead, even though he might sometimes cold call himself, and admitted to that on our show. It’s an interesting concept.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Let me share something with you. I’ve written for years about the fact that cold calling is dead. The fact is that it is not dead. It will never die. But it’s not the best percentage of connecting with somebody. There are much better ways now with social that you could connect with someone before you cold call, so it becomes a warmer call. It’s still a first time call, but it’s a warmer call.
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, I agree with that and I think the point of him creating this character was to create controversy online to segment the market and gain followers. So you’ve done a lot of that, Jeffrey, where you create controversy.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Well, controversy just seems to follow me, Jen. I don’t know what it is-
Jen Gluckow: Is it following you all the way to Paris?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yes, it is. It followed me all the way to the Super Bowl. Here’s the deal. When the front desk person at the airport says checking in, and I say, “No, I’m here for my air transplant,” that immediately creates a dialogue. Because I could say, “Yes I am, would you like my credit card?” No, I want to have some fun. And if the person will have fun back, I can create some kind of immediate engagement. And if they don’t, I know who I’m dealing with.
Jen Gluckow: You just nailed it. That’s what it’s about. It’s about creating immediate engagement. And so for our diehards out there, how do you create that immediate engagement with someone you don’t know, with someone you’ve never met, likely will never meet, online? And part of the answer to that, if I may answer my own question, is choosing a stance. Picking a side. Finding out what is their issue, what’s bothering them, what’s a hurdle in their daily life? Business life? And choosing a stance. And I think all so often, people are afraid to pick a stance and therefore say the pros about this and the cons about that.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Let’s be clear here. You don’t want to take a religious stance. You certainly don’t want to take a political stance. But you can take a business stance or a philosophical stance. And there’s been arguments through the ages. Look what they did to Cicero, look what they did to Plato. They had stances, and they died for the cause. But the bottom line is, for you, you don’t have to die for your cause, but you do have to have a cause, believe in your cause, stand up for your cause, and blog about your cause, because in today, the blog is more powerful than the New York Times if you do it right.
Jen Gluckow: So he blogged for five years, every day. So that’s 365 times 5-
Jeffrey Gitomer: That would be close to 2,000, Jen.
Jen Gluckow: That’s a lot of articles.
Jeffrey Gitomer: But here’s the deal on that. You as a diehard have an opportunity when you wake up in the morning to invest your time or spend your time. And Jamie Shanks chose to invest his time and became a leader, a world-class leader, in five years. Think about what you were doing five years ago, think about where you are today. If the advancement is not fast enough, it’s because you’re wasting your time. This kid woke up and blogged.
Jen Gluckow: And he took something. Okay, this is another piece of this. He took a concept that was incredibly timely. When he started talking about cold calling being dead, it was right on the surge of social selling, and so all these people talking about, “Oh wow, here’s the new way to sell, you have to be socially selling, you have to be social selling.” And then people started saying, “Well, do I still have to cold call?” And he immediately, right at the right time, took that stance. So you can’t just take a business stance, you have to figure out what’s timely right now, for your prospects. What do they care about right now?
Jeffrey Gitomer: And Mother Google can provide you with some of those answers, or you may see the answers. For example, you may want to become an expert at one-click buying, or the buy now button that’s on Ebay. Or you may want to become an expert at how easy it is to return things online that has created this death of retail. Or not dead, but you can see that it’s certainly in the hospital-
Jen Gluckow: Are you being wishy-washy, or are you taking a stance, Jeffrey?
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah. I’m taking a stance. I think the world is going to have a box delivery to their door. Is it going to be 100%? No. But is it going to be 75%? You bet. Maybe 74%. But I think the bottom line for you as a diehard is how can you take advantage of the existing economy, develop an expertise that has something to do with your product or service, and turn your reputation into one where you become attractive to industry leaders?
Jen Gluckow: Do you think we have diehards out there listening and thinking, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is all great, but I don’t need a social following.” I have been in business for 35 years, I have my current customers, I have their referrals, their potential referrals, I don’t need to become known on social, I don’t need thousands of followers, what’s that going to do for me?
Jeffrey Gitomer: I have a recommendation. Retire. Because there’s a young kid out there who’s going to beat a path to your customers that you will not be able to turn away.
Jen Gluckow: By the way, the reverse side of that is the person who’s become grown up with social, and thinks that social selling is the only way to sell.
Jeffrey Gitomer: I’m a face-to-facer, and I get face-to-face by talking to everybody.
Jen Gluckow: Well, also, I like a multi-pronged approach. I like reaching out on social and getting face-to-face-
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, I think social’s second, not first.
Jen Gluckow: Mm-hmm (affirmative). But Jeffrey, you have created a brand, and you have created followers, and you have created people who are attracted to you and want to reach out to you.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Hold on a minute. I created a brand by writing. I didn’t say, “Hey, I need a brand.” I created a brand by writing. I became attractive because my philosophies were known and accepted, so when I go to the barbecue place the other night with the guys from One Huddle, I was espousing the philosophy of I can talk to anybody.
Jeffrey Gitomer: So I go over to the bar where there was four or five people sitting, and I’m waiting for them patiently to stop, and the guy at the end of the bar goes, “Oh, you’re the Red Book guy.” Now, that’s a brand. He didn’t know my name. He just said you’re the Red Book guy. Okay, so I am the Red Book guy, and all of a sudden, everybody wanted to become involved in the conversation because I’m the Red Book guy. So, I go to the trunk of my car, I get a Red Book, and I autograph it to that guy. Now he’s going back and telling that story to a hundred people. I’ve created my own social viralness in a very small environment, but I did it immediately. And I did it just by talking to other people.
Jen Gluckow: Just for the record, do not ever dare Jeffrey Gitomer to talk to other people, because he is always up for the dare and he will and it will be hysterical.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Exactly.
Jen Gluckow: All right guys, we have to go. I hear you have people in the hallway that you want to talk to.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Yeah, there’s some people walking there with their dogs.
Jen Gluckow: Our neighbors. We love our neighbors. Jeffrey wants to have everyone in the building over for breakfast.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh, yeah, can’t wait to meet the neighbors. I’ve only been here for 20 years, I think it’s about time to meet them. But drink a cup of Death Wish coffee, I think that’s probably the best thing you can do to spark your own day in the morning.
Jen Gluckow: People don’t understand how good this coffee is if you’ve never had it.
Jeffrey Gitomer: We had five people over for breakfast this morning, well, four and a half-
Jen Gluckow: Yeah, a little kid.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And they were in love with the coffee. And these were European coffee drinkers.
Jen Gluckow: I thought they were going to get us out of coffee. I was a little nervous there. There was so much coffee going around. But it’s literally the best coffee I’ve ever had. It’s made from the world’s most perfectly roasted beans and they ship it right to your house every single week-
Jeffrey Gitomer: And if it’s not there you panic.
Jen Gluckow: Each week you get a fresh batch. All you have to do to get your bag is go to deathwish.com, and now it’s in a box with a silver lining.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Oh yeah.
Jen Gluckow: Oh yeah.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Pretty cool. And I want to make sure that you have a good feeling about Sell or Die. If you do and you wouldn’t mind sharing that, maybe subscribing-
Jen Gluckow: Share, subscribe, write a review, guys.
Jeffrey Gitomer: Very appreciative.
Jen Gluckow: That is right. Thank you to our amazing producer, Mr. Doug Branson.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And we will see you next week at the same Bat time, on the same Bat channel, or you can just pick it up at your leisure.
Jen Gluckow: Tune in Thursdays for our Sell or Die extra, and soon we have coming up our sales manager spotlight. Tune in Mondays on Facebook Live or Mondays on your podcast app.
Jeffrey Gitomer: We’re starting to get it. We’re starting to figure out that this is the new black.
Jen Gluckow: We are. All right. I’m Jen Gluckow.
Jeffrey Gitomer: And I’m Jeffrey Gitomer, reminding you to get out there and sell something even if your ass falls off.
