The Art of Casual Conversations on LinkedIn | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

SUMMARY: In this episode, Dan Mott and Matt Zaun talk about the art of casual conversations on LinkedIn and how to leverage this to build relationships and land more business. 

DAN MOTT BIO: Dan Mott is the founder of SIX3MEDIA, and he is a LinkedIn Social Selling Strategist.  Dan helps people turn content into followers and fans into customers.  

If you want to radically boost your sales, check out his course here | https://bit.ly/3BQ0oIW

Follow Dan Mott on LinkedIn to see his insights on the power of LI | https://bit.ly/36MJ38x

MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry. 

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact. 

For more info, check out Matt Zaun here:

https://youtu.be/pflQtzgP7X0

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattzaun/

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

That word brings up different images and business. Business leaders minds. Whenever they hear the word stories, there's a different picture. And often, business leaders think that they need to Razzle and dazzle their audience when it comes to stories they think it's like a Broadway play or a movie production where they need to perform for their audience and often when I talk about stories that's not what I'm saying I'm I'm really focusing in on utilizing stories to connect with people on a much deeper level actually building sound business relationships. I'm excited for today's conversation, because that's what we're going to focus in on we're going to focus in on the art of casual conversation why that is so powerful in a business setting because today I'm joined by Dan Mott, who's the founder of six, three media. He's a LinkedIn social selling strategist who helps people turn content into followers and fans into customers. Welcome to the show, Dan.
Hey, man, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. Absolutely.
I'm very excited that you're here. So full disclosure for listeners. I've been friends with Dan now for quite some time, Dan, and I've done numerous trainings together. Are we coming up on two years now?
Yeah, I think even maybe even over two years at this point. Hasn't Wow.
That's yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. I know. Yeah. We've had a ton of fun and we connected I think prior to COVID. I guess that's how I now um, I think back it has been over two years now. And we've done a lot of trainings we've done a lot of we've done podcasts together. We've done LinkedIn lives together. With a big focus on how to utilize the power of LinkedIn through messaging and marketing and storytelling. So I'm really excited to dive into something new that you have right now you just launched your course. That is invaluable to many many people teaching them how to really utilize LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the most underutilized social media platforms that is is crazy to me, like business leaders, they're not taking advantage of it and they're missing out in a big, big way. So can you dive into a little bit about what you have going on? Recently regarding your course and what you really focus on when it comes to LinkedIn? Yeah,
definitely. So I just officially launched the course, LinkedIn social selling two days 22 days ago at this point, so it's still very fresh. It focuses on literally over the past three years, everything that I have done on LinkedIn, to be able to grow my business from finding clients to finding partners on my business ventures to partners like you Matt, where we continuously collaborate on you know, on our show, I've had you on my podcast I'm now on your podcast, we do Power Hour every single week, right, like so these these strategic business relationships. Every person that I've ever met that has made an impact on my business, or reconnected with from a past life, like, you know, like high school friends and stuff like that. It found me on LinkedIn. Everything has come from LinkedIn, purely just because of the power of networking, creating content and engaging with people. And that's exactly what this course is about. This is exactly what I do in my coaching. I teach people the boils down to the five pillars of what are what I refer to as the the five pillars of LinkedIn social selling, and it's all kind of the the lessons and strategies, routines and processes that you need to be very efficient with your time on LinkedIn. So that way, you're not just spinning cycles, you're actually being strategic about how you're networking. Sure.
Awesome. Thank you for mentioning that. I think having background is really helpful. Let me let me paint the picture a little bit bigger for listeners regarding LinkedIn because I feel I feel like it's crazy that I'm saying this in 2022. But there's so many leaders that have not caught on to the power of LinkedIn like there are there are agencies that their whole job is to get people exposure on line and they'll tell all these different things. They'll mention Facebook, and they'll mention Instagram, and they'll mention tick tock and for whatever reason they don't talk about LinkedIn. So let me kind of set the groundwork and then we'll dive in more to what you do regarding LinkedIn. LinkedIn was purchased by Microsoft Microsoft has said publicly that it was the best business decision they ever made to purchase LinkedIn. Microsoft isn't going anywhere anytime soon, and they're going they're heavily investing in LinkedIn. Right now. LinkedIn has some of the best organic reach out of any single social media platform on the planet. You can argue Tik Tok has better organic reach but a lot of people that are listening as podcasts or customers aren't on Tik Tok yet. They're on LinkedIn. The fact that business leaders are not focused on LinkedIn to me is mind boggling. They're they're missing out in a big, big big way I can speak from experience. The overwhelming majority of my business has come through LinkedIn through doing what you do then producing good content people see the content you know you talk about, about shifting content into followers and then ultimately, the more followers you have the more eyeballs on your stuff, the more clients that you can get from that. So my challenge to everyone listening, first step, focus more on LinkedIn. Once you focus more on LinkedIn. Now you're going to be really interested in what Dan does because what Dan does on LinkedIn, he's created a machine if you will, on how to utilize LinkedIn as effectively as possible because everyone is strapped for time. Dan, what you've done is you have a very systematic and formula approach for how you tackle LinkedIn. So we're going to dive into that so once once everyone listens now that they get their their button gear, they're on LinkedIn now what do they do? What do you teach your clients to do? Once they start focusing more on LinkedIn? What do you teach them to do?
God? Yeah, it really it's, you know, it's different for everyone. It all really kind of depends on on where they're starting where they are today, and more importantly, what their goals are and where they want to go. But I'll say you know, for context, based on that question, if you're really just getting started on LinkedIn, I kind of take people through phases, right? Like the most important thing that you need to do is build a routine, or you need to you need to commit to being consistent. So that means like, whoever they are just like, how much time are you willing to invest on LinkedIn? Right? Is that an hour a day? Is that an hour a week? And then from there, just getting them into the routine of actually just posting content? Because depending on their background, right, like, say you've written blogs before or you've written emails and stuff like that. You have some copywriting experience. You have some expertise that you're comfortable sharing, but some people who've never done any writing and then they're also just getting into LinkedIn for the first time. Literally just trying to figure out what they're going to talk about and how to write it and how to how to put it together and how to post right is, is such a big thing to overcome. So it's about breaking down those, those those habits and routines to just just start right like get started. Start posting, commit to something whether it be one post a week, two posts a week, three posts a week, get comfortable, and then move forward from there.
Alright, that's a really good point. Just start somewhere, start building that out, start getting in the habit and then also recognizing that once you come up with a systematic approach, once you have these habits in place, then you're going to start to see business come in. It's not going to be an instant thing but once you actually have a system in place, you will start to see results. I was recently talking to a company that I consider a successful company. And I was shocked like then you'll probably be shocked to hear when I say this I literally was blown away that they're still teaching their sales representatives. They buy lists, so they buy lists, and they're teaching their sales representatives the best the I'm using air quotes now the best way to call through these less cold calling. And I'm thinking if they had with Dan mod has the system you have in place regarding how to approach people once you did everything that you said once you you focus on LinkedIn, you start doing content you start setting up a system that they did what you do regarding messaging and actually having like these casual conversations, is that not significantly better than cold calling? Like, are we in the early 90s? Or is is 2022 I was so confused.
Well, it's funny, right? Like cold calling, I don't want to say doesn't work anymore, but it's significantly harder. Because you can screen calls. You can say like my phone literally rings and says telemarketer like why would I answer that? Right? And I think that people are taking a very similar approach on LinkedIn where they're just like going out into their spam connecting these lists. And they're talking about they're just like me, me, me, me, me, right. They're like talking about me and my services and how I can help you and that's people shut down when they see that right there. Like it's the same reason like you answer that call and you're like, Hey, do you have 30 seconds to let me tell you about XYZ? No, I don't I don't want to talk to you about this. Right. But when you when someone like when you when you actually go out there and you're engaging in your network, right, like, people think that LinkedIn is a sales tool. They think it's a marketing tool. It's not it's a networking tool. You have to go out there you have to you have to connect with people and you have to build a relationship with them. So when you go in and you like, you leave from your personal experiences, you start conversations based on the conversations, the stories that are already happening there on LinkedIn. It makes it so much easier to connect with someone and I don't mean just hit the connect button. I mean, like actually connect with them on a human level and start a conversation with them.
Alright, so let's let's focus in on on something you just said regarding LinkedIn being a networking tool. Yeah. So I don't think anyone listening to this podcast episode would argue that networking is not important. I mean, I'm not aware of any business book that's ever been written saying don't network right. And we we put a very high importance on networking with people right going out there networking building, business relationships. The fact that LinkedIn I call LinkedIn, networking on steroids, right. It's a way to supercharge your ability to connect with people on a very quick level and then start building that relationship and I often talk about prior to COVID. I was doing tons of in person networking events, and I don't think people realize the time suck that is to drive to an event to be at an event for two to three hours, to mingle to have dinner or to have a beer to connect with someone than to drive home then to send an email to that nice meeting you at such and such event Bob and then felt like that's a very, very time consuming activity. But now we have the power to connect with someone on LinkedIn or follow someone on LinkedIn. Send them a message. I love what you talk about the art of casual conversation. We'll get to in a sec, but have a conversation with them, see if they're the right fit. And to dive deeper, like it's literally supercharging our ability to network. So once once people change their mindset from this as a sales tool, this is you know, this is something I could use to spam people on a higher level. Once they reframe their mindset and actually view it as a big networking event. What do you recommend regarding the art of conversations when it comes to messaging that person?
Yeah, so I think the idea right, there's, and let me kind of like step back, right? Because you have to even decide, do I want to message this person? Because the last and that's, that's another huge problem with that. We've just like spamming lists, right? It's like you don't know the quality of those people if you're not going to go do your homework on them. So the very first thing I like in terms of having a conversation with them is I'm gonna go check out their profile. I'm gonna go check out their content, I'm gonna see what they do what they're talking about what they care about, both in business and their personal life, right because if I don't think that they're going to be a good prospect for me, I'm not gonna bother reaching out to them because I don't want to waste my time and I don't want to waste theirs. That's that's not going to be productive. For either of us. Right? So So qualification is hands down the absolute first part. From there if I actually decide, hey, this is a good person, awesome. I do want to connect with them. Let me start a conversation with them. The last thing I want to do is like run in with them and try and pitch them my service, right? In fact, the way that I teach it is a successful conversation is one where you actually don't even talk about your services. The only time I actually bring up my services is when someone physically asks about them. And then of course, I'm gonna provide the details. But my goal through that conversation is just to get to know them, ask them really good questions to make sure that they're actually in a position where I can help them and then simply ask them if they'd like my help. And then the next step from there is to hop on a call with them. That's the point where I can start talking about my services. So going back to your question, Matt, like how do you actually start that conversation? For me it's about finding some commonality, right, some common interests that we can actually connect on again, because I'm not trying to lead with my services I'm trying to lead so I'm simply trying to start a conversation with another human being. So the to two places I look are the profile and their content. And I scroll through their profiles, see what they're about. Is there anything that resonates with me that I connect with? Did they recently post something that I can talk about if it can I go commented on it and then just continue the conversation in a DM from there?
Alright, so let's let's back up and talk about the qualification process because I don't want people to miss that because I love what you do regarding pre qualifying people. And why that's so important. So in 2018, you'll get a kick out of this Dan, is horrifying to me. And 2018 I was speaking at a conference and the speaker that got on stage right before I did was talking about this writ intensive work mentality. And he was literally I kid you not this is 2018. So this is not that long ago. He was literally telling people to put flyers on people's cars to wait outside when people get done with church and they're walking out of church to hand them business cards. To wait for people to leave the gym and hand people like he literally so whole mindset was grit and intensity, and you need to be committed. It was like a really intensive talk on how you need to burn the candle on both ends. You don't need to be weak as a salesperson you need to like get at it. And then I was following this guy and I'm like, Oh, my Lord, because my whole my whole talk was on strategic storytelling, how to actually utilize storytelling to connect with people. That's not the way I teach anyone to connect with anyone. Right? So I'm hearing you say about pre pre qualification. And that's like the pendulum on the complete opposite side like throwing everything out there very archaic practices, by the way, like that's even to me that's almost even worse than spam. Like to actually wait for people to pounce on them to like shove a business card in people's face like that's super archaic. It's like door to door salesman right back in the day. Like do you want to buy my vacuum cleaner?
What's that? That was my first job out of college. I learned I learned to hate selling right off the bat. So I need to take an approach that works. For me.
That's like the most high rejection wanted to buy my vacuum cleaner like knife people's doors. So that's like the complete opposite side of the spectrum of what you do like you actually qualified people. So let's talk about that. So let's actually talk about like a sane way to do this. So I don't think like I think people might hear that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. We need to qualify them. But can you talk about that a little bit more and expand on that, like people don't need to be doing business with everyone. Like I almost feel like the goal is to like Nix as many people as you can to actually make sure you're working with people that you actually want to be working with. Can you dive into that a little bit more? Definitely. Yeah.
So I like to actually say that I like to disqualify more than I like to qualify. I would like to repel as many people as possible because then what I'm doing is I'm attracting the right people in the process. People who are significantly easier to work with, they are positioned better for me to actually do my job and get them the results that they want to see. And they're not going to be a pain in the ass in the process. So I'm going to enjoy working with them better. So like there's, there's there's a lot of components there. But let me kind of back it up from from a high level really quick. So I very briefly mentioned everything I teach falls under the five pillars of LinkedIn social selling. So at a super high level and I'll just dive into the first one because that's the one we're talking about here. Those the five pillars are audience profile, content, engagement, and prospecting. So everything the first one is audience for a reason, because literally the other four pillars don't work unless you're dialed in on your ICP your ideal client persona, your audience, your target market, your niche, whatever you want to call it. You absolutely have to know inside and out who your target market is. Because if you don't, it becomes extremely difficult to market to and sell to them. So in terms of qualifying, right, like that's where I say you gotta go look at their profile, you gotta go look at their content. You gotta go look at their brain. There's gonna be different for everyone depending on who you're selling to what you're selling and all these factors. So you really need to do your homework on this and know who is your ideal buyer who you after that's going to be based on their geography or their title or how much experience they have. There's there's a lot of different things that we can qualify just looking at someone's profile, right like these are going to be the tangible things, then there's kind of the intangibles that you can't really qualify until you actually have a conversation with someone. So that's what that's where good questioning comes in. So when I do this pre qualification process, I'm literally just looking at like the demographics, the titles, the the geography. What they say on their profile, what industry they're in, right, like all these things I'm looking for to know is this person and part of my ICP, are they a good fit for me? Based on the information that I can see, do I believe that I can actually help them? If that's a yes, awesome. I'm going to start a conversation with them because then I can continue asking questions to figure out if they're actually in the space where I can where that where I can help, like continue to help them.
Everything is that was awesome. And I really appreciate it. And I also want people to recognize like, you do this very, very well regarding content. So you may you may produce a piece of content that some people don't relate to. And they may not even like it. It's no sweat off your brow, right? Because you want to work with people that actually appreciate what you do. They actually want to get results with what you do. And so it doesn't matter. And I had to learn I had to learn this the hard way. So you talked about ICP the ideal client persona. So my clients are predominantly 45 to 70 year olds that are CEOs or C suite executives of medium sized companies. I'm not aware of a client that I work with in the last three years that doesn't have children like every single client I work with has children for whatever reason it's it's two kids it says it that's what it is right and like so people might be thinking like listen this thinking like who cares what does that do anything with anything? Well, it does to me because my content can be more relatable to them. So I often talk about my kids but from a business perspective. So like my son who's seven, who watches marketing clips on YouTube was teaching me something about marketing the other day, I'd be a fool not to mention that right? Like how amazing is that from a story piece? Well, as someone asked me, Why do you talk about your kids so much? I don't really want to hear about that. They're not going to be my ideal client because 99.9% Of all the clients that I work with have kids. A lot of the businesses that I work with are family owned private companies, right that end up passing it down to their children. So it's a very family oriented type environment that I'm typically in. So I mentioned that because you're really big on this regarding content like and sometimes you even will put out content that might repel some people, but again, it doesn't matter because it's not your ideal client. So I want people to recognize that. Your job is not to sell to everybody that's nauseating. That's actually horrifying to me because like I've done work with people, that looking back I never would have done business with them before. It wasn't even worth the money. Like I remember, early on I was you know, I'll do workshops for everyone. Everyone can get better at strategic storytelling. I could teach everyone that different. The different concepts I learned along the way in the political arena led me to end and it was it was so frustrating because I would do these workshops for some companies that it wasn't they were just tough to work with. And it's like I want people that actually apply this actually want to see the magnitude of what this does for them. And I love I love what you do, Dan, because you really teach people it doesn't matter. Like you take people off and they don't want to follow you. They don't care about your stuff. It doesn't matter and you've done a masterful job at that. So can you speak on that a little bit more regarding content when it comes to audience?
Yeah, definitely. So one of my favorite quotes is I'd rather be earning Don't be something for everyone. Be everything for someone. And the idea is right, like if you try to be a jack of all trades, if you try to be a little bit of everything. If you try to appeal to everyone, if you try to appeal to the masses, you're not going to stand out, right? You're just going to be kind of lost in the sea of the same. Whereas if you are hyper focused on your ICP, on what you do and being really good at it, that's where people you really get to showcase your expertise. You really get to you get to hammer home your message every single time you post every single time you have a conversation with someone and you get remembered for who you are and what you do and that's what makes people buy from you. So yeah, when it comes to content 100% Right, like that's the you know, that's the third pillar is move, you know, like taking your ICP, knowing exactly who they are, what they care about. And then that's the content that you want to use to attract and repel people. So, right like the moment that I start, I stopped talking about LinkedIn on LinkedIn, I lose those people who are interested in what I have to say about LinkedIn, right like those people follow me for my insights about LinkedIn. So the moment that I start talking about Twitter or Facebook or something like that, right, they the I'm gonna lose them. They're gonna be like, Oh, okay, you know, Dan kind of starts talking about all social media. So then they don't see me as the LinkedIn expert. They see me as like the social media guy and like, I now kind of lose that momentum that I have with my with my target audience. So I think you know, it's incredibly important to be hyper focused on your audience, their challenges, their pain points, what they actually care about, because when they see that message over and over and over again coming from you, they know exactly who you are, what you stand for, and why they are going to want to work with you. In the future or today.
Yeah, that's phenomenal information. I hope people really grab a hold of there's something there's something that's become a real problem in our society, and I want to not to go like too deep with this, but I think it's really important for people to grab a hold of this. What I think is become very dangerous for our society is this idea of identity management. And basically what identity management is, is people create this false sense of reality on social media, where they like want to look perfect, and they want all these amazing filters and they like for whatever reason they want to paint the perception that they're this amazing human being and they're like flawless, which everyone knows is BS, right? But it's this idea of identity management. And I think what you do Dan is so different and it's so freeing and so liberating, because basically I've heard you say time and time again. I am who I am. I'm gonna be myself. If people don't like it. They're not my ideal client. But I want people to recognize this is who I am. Do you want to do business with me or not? And I want you to speak to that a little bit because I think it's so freeing because in the sales world, they're really into identity management. They want to be everything to everybody. They want to look awesome, and they want these fit like and I feel like you're different in the sense that you can actually be yourself like you actually talk about Harry Potter and dungeon and Dungeons and Dragons and like things you're into like hobbies, right? So it's kind of break down barriers and connect with people to some salespeople. That sounds crazy that you would dive in to like that those casual conversation hobbies stuff. So can you talk more about, like, just being yourself and being you like, I think there's there's there's magnitude in that?
Yeah. And I'll start off by saying the amount of calls that I booked based off of like the fact that I go there to send my profile or I talk about Harry Potter or Dungeons Dragons is absurd to me, right? Like, that's the reason that someone connects with me, and then it turns into a business opportunity is absurd, right. So I think it's really important, right? And this is, we were talking about this yesterday, right? It's kind of like the desperation factor. It's like it's the reason people don't want to niche down. It's like they don't want to pigeonhole themselves and they're afraid of being focused on one audience and that's why they kind of try to be everything to everyone. And I think that there's a very close tie here because it's the same thing right? Like you're if you're going after a prospect and you see that there that there's some interest, but they're like, maybe not the perfect fit for you. They're not really like they're close to your ICIMOD ICP but they're not 100% Right? And then you start trying to be something that you're not to in order to to better appeal to them to try and to try and win the business right. But winning their business is only the beginning of the relationship, right? Like you still have to like actually execute upon that and build that relationship over time. So if you're trying to kind of like be someone that you're not it that that's extremely difficult, right, that's it that's exhausting. It's so much easier just to be yourself than to try and kind of like fake who you are to better appeal to one client. And then you're then you're meeting different people for all of your different clients. And then that's exhausting trying to remember like who you are right? It's like you're just you're sewing lies like it's just easier to to live your true self. I think. If people don't want to do business with you as a result of that, then that's perfectly fine. Right? They're probably gonna be a crappy customer anyway. So I think it's extremely extremely important to be yourself to be your true to live to your true identity to not try and kind of put on a facade or be something that you're not because you think that that's going to win you more business, right? Being your true authentic self is always going to prevail to the point now where we're seeing and people always referred to it as like, oh, LinkedIn is becoming more like Facebook, right? Like, the way that I interpret that is that people are sharing more of their personal stories. They're sharing their experiences. They're sharing, right like sometimes like depressing stuff and those posts blow up because people empathize. People sympathize with them, and they see, hey, this person is another human being. They're not just a robot trying to pitch me their services. They're real, right? Like, we're all human beings. We all make mistakes. We all have our ups and downs. And when we see that other people are sharing those stories with us and they see that hey, this person is just like me, it becomes the barriers drop and it makes it so much easier for us to reach out with them to for us to connect with them on a human level to start a conversation to build a relationship. And when you do that, it becomes so much easier to turn that person into a client if there's fit.
Yeah, and think about all the changes that we've gone through as a society in the last two years, right. We're excited us we're forced to work from home. And we have kids at home so we're balancing between business and family. And it's not a nine to five, this is my work time. This is my family time. It's a mixed mumbo jumbo of this is like it's so I think that changed LinkedIn back to your point on did LinkedIn become Facebook. It's like well, if you're working and in the background is your child like you're going to be more inclined to talk about more personal stuff. Yep. I was flabbergasted. So this just just goes to show you that like what you're saying. is true. Like, uh, not wanting to do business with some people. Early on in the pandemic. I think we were like, four or five months. And like everyone in the world recognize what was happening. There were parents at home with children. And this one gentleman I had a call with them. And I said to him, I said, Listen, I said I can't do this over zoom. Right now. I'm going to be with my son. My wife has a meeting like we were trading off back and forth between meetings. And being with the kids. I have young kids. And I said I can't do a zoom call right now. I love to do this call over the phone. I'm going to have my my son with me at the time. I think it was like two years old. I'm gonna have my son with me. And the guy was like, No, I want to do it. Over zoom. So I had to have my son with me while I was doing the call and this guy got super annoyed. And then like he wanted to become a client of mine. And I'm like if you get annoyed because we're in the middle of a freakin pandemic where I have to be at home and I'm holding my two year old son, dude, I don't care how much money you're gonna pay me. I don't want to do business with you. Right? So that's like talking about personal. And then if I would have taken a picture of that with my son and my arms saying like, hey, my son's learning about how to do meetings and I would have posted on LinkedIn it would have gotten a ton of traction because it would have been your basketball related for a month. Yeah, no, I know. I know. It's crazy. So I think it's really important for people to be themselves. One of the things that I teach in all my workshops is if you truly want to have an impact on your audience, you can never be the hero of your own story. The hero can be someone else or something else, but it can't be us. So it can be a mentor can be a client, it can be a team member so that someone else or it could be something else. It could be a concept. It could be a strategy, it could be lessons learned. It's not saying I'm the best at x y and z. It's really focusing on how you learn that through someone else and you're masterful at this, like I've seen posts, then that you do where you're like, I'm messed up, or I screwed up or I you know, blah, blah, blah, and then you go into like what you did wrong and what you learned and that lesson serves as the hero and those posts blow up. And it's a complete mindset shift on I need to be perfect I need to be this like identity management, awesome human being first, hey, I screwed up. I was doing it wrong for a few months. This is what I learned and then you get a ton of traction. So I appreciate you talking about just freakin being yourself. Yeah,
and I think right that the moment that we talk about how awesome we are and how great we are right like that turns no one cares. Because like everyone wants to be everyone wants to be the hero of their own story right so like the moment that you start saying Nene me people shut down. And that's for the same reason that like when you go out and you start DMing people and you start pitching them immediately in the conversation, you're doing the same thing. You're saying me me, look how awesome my services are. Look how great you know, like, look how much you know, I've been able to help my clients and I can do the same for you. Right and it's just like that's such a turnoff for people. They don't want to hear how great you are. They want to hear how great you can make them. And I think that that's an important thing to consider which is why like just going out there just being yourself starting a conversation, networking, just getting to know people building relationships is so incredibly important as we continue to kind of like move along this journey. And I think you're right like the pandemic kind of just like really accelerated this thing, where you see like the Facebook, Facebook, ification of LinkedIn, people sharing more of their personal stories, people just being themselves and I think that that's super critical. I think it was I think it was a game. I think it was a differentiator a couple years ago, and now it's almost like mandatory right like there's there's now people doing this and people are seeing it and resonating with it copying it themselves. They're these are the people that they want to do business with. These are the people that they want to network with partner with collaborate with. And anyone else who's not doing that now is now the outlier and they're they're going to lose business. They're going to lose eyeballs. They're going to lose rapport with these people if they keep doing things, the old The old way. Sure,
sure. It's really good point. Really good point. So we've covered a lot so far. I want to focus a little bit more about the art of casual conversation. But we did talk a lot we talked about qualifying, qualifying. So having that IC P ideal client persona that goes back to the audience who's the audience are serving we talked about qualification. Once you get that audience you talked about, you know, titles going through their content, like actually pre qualifying them. Let's talk a little bit more about it was five those prospects to prospect and correct. So you say it again? So the one through five, it was five that was prospecting. Is that right? Yeah.
Five, five is the last one is because you really need all the other components even just to get to that point. Sure.
Okay. So let's talk about that a little bit. More. So your course really walks through all of this and much much depth and it gives people ABC how to do this. You have the formula you have the system in place. But let's talk about the prospecting piece. Briefly on the art of casual conversation. I love how you focus in on that. So once you start the prospecting element and you're sending messages, can you talk a little bit about messages that you recommend your clients to send? So you've pre qualified someone you know, they're your ICP? What do you do in the messaging to start off that conversation?
Awesome. So up to a high level, kind of the the five steps of the art of casual conversation really starts with first qualifying. So we've gone through that right. The next is the icebreaker, really just starting the conversation. Then from there it is being relevant. So bringing the conversation back to your area of subject matter expertise, so that way you can position yourself as an expert and lead by helping them and then what you want to do from there is you want to actually start to challenge them make them question where they are in that process towards their goals. So then that way, what you can do is you can highlight the pain points, the challenges they're experiencing, and simply ask them five, step five is the ask if they would like your help. Right? So again, through that entire process, I'm never going to be pitching my services unless they actually ask what they are, how much they cost a lot. I'll gladly give them that information. But my goal through the conversation is simply get them to the point where I can make the ask if like, Hey, listen, you know, like hopefully I've been helpful in this conversation. Would you like to, you know, just continuing on a call and see where it goes from here, right? So the whole point is literally just start a conversation and then get them to the point where they're actually willing to get on a call with me.
Perfect. Alright, so let's, I'm going to rattle them back off to your quick and then we'll focus in on them a little bit. So qualify icebreaker relevant challenge them and ask exactly Okay, so the icebreaker So we've talked a little bit about the qualifies. Let's let's dive in the icebreaker a little bit more. We briefly touched on it. So basically you you respect Harry Potter the story your you read the books, you've gone to the movies, and that has broken out barriers for you recognizing someone else appreciates Harry Potter that could be an icebreaker right? So your son instead of you being like full sales mode, selling vacuum cleaners out the door. It's Hey, I saw that you know you share something about Harry Potter one of the things that you learned about business from that I'm also a Harry Potter fan. You know, what's something else that you got out of Harry Potter? Is that what you mean by ice breaker?
Exactly. Yeah. So it's just finding that that that, that common interests, something that you know that you can both relate to that makes it super easy to start a conversation right. And I think you know, you could you made a great point of like, talking about networking events and right like I think that the the act of being able to just like sit down at, you know, at a bar or order a drink, turn to the person sitting next to you and just ask like, What are you drinking right like as a super way easy way to start a conversation you're not going to just like take out your business card and be like, do you need to buy the stuff that I'm selling? So right like is just find find that one thing that that makes it super easy for you to connect. If you can find something on your on their profile, great. Another great place and actually content is even better place for that so if they're actively posting content is amazing place to go find something that you connect you connect on. So Matt, you use the example before of talking about your your children and like how they're, you know, sitting on your lap, how they're, you know, reading, watching marketing videos, and then how you can kind of like bring them into your business as a result of that. Right like that's a super easy way to relate like that's that's one of the triggers that I actually use. If you go to LinkedIn if you look at my profile and my tagline it says Dad, dad, hashtag best job ever. Right? Like I'm relating to those people for that same reason. So whenever someone is out there talking about a post about their kids I can never reply start talking about my kids. Right like that is an icebreaker that's a super easy way for us to start a conversation if they're posting about right like and we talked about some of the I the things that are kind of our that I thoroughly enjoy, right and that's almost a way for people to icebreaker me so when I have when I talked about Harry Potter dungeons, dragons or anything else that I'm interested either in my profile my content, and they reach out to me, they're now actually using my stuff as the icebreaker and they've already done that job for me, which is amazing. But if they're talking about whatever they're interested in, in their content and their profile, and I read that resonates with me, right, like if you put out a post about beer and like I'm like, Hey, I had that beer last night, right? Like, if they're talking about, you know, they went to they took their kids to Disney. It's just like, hey, I was at Disney last year did you enjoy like this ride or that ride? Right so it's it's literally anything that you can on a human level connect with, right? Like anything that you can relate to? Because then you can share your experiences with that too. And then now you've got a back and forth going. So the icebreakers only purpose is to get them to respond. So just find some level of common interest to put it out there. Ask a question about it and use that as as the reason for them to get back because a conversation only happens when it's two people talking. So you first need to get them to respond before you can even do anything else.
Absolutely, and one of the things for me that's been helpful. As I often talk about a story back story bank is basically you are capturing experience that happened in your life and business. You actually have a way to document them. You're putting them in your story bank, and then you're utilizing them to connect with others. So this is I think, is a primary example of that. When
you first told me about this, it blew my mind and I was like oh my God, I need to be doing this. It's helped so incredibly mine so thank you.
Absolutely, absolutely. So this is a real life. Example based on the icebreaker and relevant and then challenge and ask and it hits all the hits most of them right so prequalify this person, I was at an event I was doing a workshop and during the workshop this is weeks ago. Someone told me about Shawn that day, and I didn't know that. So for those of you listening, who recognize that name, Sean McVeigh is the coach to the Los Angeles Rams. They are the Super Bowl champions. I didn't realize this until this one guy told me but Sean McVeigh right around the time of the playoffs Super Bowl, he was working 16 hour days literally someone would bring him lunch, he'd have lunch in his office and there were often times where he literally passed out in his office and go to sleep because he was watching footage like so the intensity was like a 10 Because obviously he wants to win the Superbowl. I didn't realize he was doing 16 hour days like passing out in his office and basically sleeping there of the playoffs. So after this after now getting that piece of information, I tucked it away in my story back because that was very interesting to me. And then very soon after, there was an individual one this goes back to the qualifying and understanding my audience. This person was a football fan. This person had some stuff that they had already posted about the Super Bowl so I already know if I say Shawn, like Dave, they're going to understand who that is. And this person just talked about a really intensive project that was a three week project where he was trying to challenge his sales reps that hey, for the next three weeks, we got to go gangbusters but once we get this done, there's going to be light at the end of the tunnel. We'll be able to ease up and relax a little bit. So knowing all this information, I lead in with Hey, I just saw that you posted about this intensive through a project. You know I've been there when it comes to intensive projects. I just learned that Sean McVeigh was going through so much footage he literally had he was passed out in his office working 16 hour days. That blew me away go figure he ends up winning the Superbowl because of actually having that sprint of intensity. So again, icebreaker I wasn't selling anything super relevant to what he's going through. And basically we started the conversation going back and forth. And he really wanted to utilize my storytelling services to help his sales reps get over this hump. So it goes back to I ended up challenging him and he asked me different things about what I did. So I almost had all the different tiers. That you had just there in a Sean McVeigh football icebreaker, right so like people can do this. This is not like some theory that you read in a business book but doesn't work in reality like this stuff works. So just just can you talk more about the Can you talk more about the icebreaker because I feel like my audience a lot of times are taught to type a full throttle in your face like intensive business people and their like business business business. Right. So can you I want you to expand on the importance of that icebreaker because everyone's you know, obviously the ones to be relevant. They want to challenge they want to get to the ass but can you talk about the importance of that icebreaker on why it's important to tuck away different like life stories to connect with people?
Yeah, definitely. I think that right? It's the whole goal of the icebreaker is to show them that you're not there to sell them that you're not there to pitch them on their services. It's just to get to know them. It's just to network them. It's just to simply start a conversation in terms of like having a right like I think that that's such a perfect example right because there's so many things align there but it's like it's almost like destiny that like they were to go through that experience that then closely aligns with your story that you have, like aligned ready to go for that right. So it's like you have the ammunition in the end like in the bank ready to go. It's like you get that like you hear that? The person asked you that question. They post that comment or they they say that thing, and you just boom, you've got like the whole thing ready to go and it just it makes you relatable, right? It makes it easy for you to connect with them. Like I don't know how obviously if you're in person in this particular scenario, it's like you're not just gonna walk away from someone no matter what they ask you. Even if they ask you ask you a bad question, but you know, like, say if that was a DM or if that was an email or something like that, right? Like, I think the only reason that someone would not respond to that because it was so absolutely relevant to them in their current experience. Is if they just never received it in the first place, or if they saw it and just like got lost in the sauce and they just like didn't have to, like forgot to respond to it right away and it just kind of got lost from there. So yeah, I mean, that's the biggest thing right is like is being relatable is being likable is being someone that they actually want to talk to when you're walking through the mall. And like you said, like someone's, so I love this one. We're like to when someone's handing out flyers, right? And it's just like, I always think of that. It's just like, Oh, here you throw this out, right? Like I have no intention of reading it like so like, it's like, same thing right? Like someone's someone's walking down. Like you're walking through the mall and someone's like, you know, like, you're talking with your family or your friends or something like that. And they're trying to get disruption, right? They're like, hey, you know, like, we've got this we've got that and are trying to sell you on the services and you're like you ignore like, in no social search situation. Do you ignore someone unless they're like, aggressively pitching you Right? Like you kind of just turn your head and you pretend that you're actively in conversation, even though you might not be right you're like, I'll pretend to be talking to me intensely about this. Well, why like, how do I ignore this person right? I mean, shit like you even look at like, people begging for money on the street right when they like shake their cup in your face, right? Like it's a very kind of aggressive approach. When you kind of look at all these instances, right, you're, you're you're being disruptive, you're being aggressive, you're being in someone's face, and it turns them off, it pushes them away. Whereas if you can be relatable, if you can be if you can be something that someone actually cares about. It's so it just attracts them as opposed to repelling them. And I think that to your point of like having good stories ready to go, right? Having your past experiences and having like having them in a bank and stored place that you can reference them is amazing, right? Because then you can just pull those out at any point. In time. And eventually as you build them up, and you kind of realize, Hey, what are the triggers for the story? What did someone have to say or mention to me or you know, just I have to hear where my mind clicks and says, Oh, that story or that story or that story? When you have these things ready to go. You are literally prepared for every single situation any anytime I like any type of conversation that comes up right and I think you like Matt, you've talked and you do a better job at this than I do is like you have your stories ready to go based on triggers based on keywords based on like, how messages align so then that way when someone says something, no matter what you have at least one story ready to go in response to that. And I think that that is such a powerful tool to be able to connect with any person in any situation.
I would challenge people to tweak how they are taking in entertainment. And what I mean by that is we're all super busy, right? So we all want a way to relax. We want that pressure relief out like we work a hard day and then at night, a lot of times people they just kind of want to check out they want to relax. I would really challenge people instead of there is a time to do mindless stuff. And there's a time to be relaxed but I would also challenge people to try to figure out how to tweak their entertainment and what I mean by that is like sometimes people are blown away with the just the sheer volume of books I go through. Well, I do it because I'm constantly adding my story back I'm doing it to actually do what Dan is talking about. Because by reading a ton of books, I'm getting a ton of information. I'm getting a ton of stories, I'm becoming more and more and more relatable. So even if people don't have time to read books, you know, maybe they could do audiobooks, you know when they commute back and forth. Maybe they can do there's like Spark notebooks nowadays where it's like, they give you like Cliff Notes of books, right? So there are different things people can do. Podcasts is a big one. They could do different things to be absorbing that information to be more relatable the more books you read the more information you go through even going and reading content on LinkedIn. I've learned so much by by reading your content down on LinkedIn about different things I've never thought of before from from a systematic approach that's going to make me more relatable to talk to other people because now when I'm messaging someone I can say listen one of my buddies Dan, I learned XY and Z from him. I think that's a super relatable to what you're going through and where I'm going to start that conversation offering them value. Right. So I would challenge everyone listening to this to focus on how can you absorb more stories and information so you can give more icebreakers you can be more relatable you can actually take part in the art of casual conversation like Dan's talking about
I think you bring up such a good point there right like our own experiences. We don't often think of them as stories but that's what they are right like, is as as long as we position it that way just going through life going through our day to day in our personal life, in our profession. Whatever we're doing, those are all experiences that we can that most likely someone else can relate to. Right? So you just kind of have to like think of that right? Like, and that's like I'm really big on journaling. So I think like journaling is a good way for me to kind of like fight if I had a good day or a bad day if I had a win or a loss if I had whatever my experience was right I document that and it helps kind of like helps that story resonate within my head so then that way it's there ready to go for the next time I need it for when a conversation comes up right like if someone like right like I had a bad day because of XYZ and then someone tells that like that same story, or they have a completely different story, but it's because of the same cause. I like I have a reason to talk to them. I share that experience with them. I can now share my story with them because it's going to relate to them. They're going to care about it. It makes me relatable it makes me likable and makes me a lot easier to start a conversation with.
Well, well said and my challenge to everyone listening though is that you you run a company and you're thinking I can just delegate this to my sales reps. I think that's a bad mentality to be in like I I want people, especially CEOs, especially leaders, of leaders of companies to still do what Dan is talking about. Maybe you're not sending a ton of emails back and forth on LinkedIn, but you're in the mentality. It's a philosophical identity of your organization. Here's what I mean by that. Recently, I was working with a company. I was so proud of the founder and owner of this company. So this guy still to this day. He's the CEO he runs the organization. It's a company of 500 people and instead of doing a pitch to one of their prospects, he said, You know what, I have a story that's very relatable to this company. I want to be in on it. So a lot of leaders would just delegate that right I got a fleet of sales reps, you go out and do this. He was a part of the conversation shared an unbelievably relevant story was an awesome way to have an icebreaker create relatability connect with that prospect. And oh my gosh, what an amazing leader. His leaders are looking at that, like this is what we need to be doing. And I just spoke a lot of high volumes from from this individual. So I would recommend everyone listening to this. This is not something that you delegate Yes. You know, maybe again, you're not doing messages back and forth, but it's a philosophical approach is how do you actually be more relatable? How do you do more of these icebreakers? How do you partake in the art of casual conversation? How do you create this culture among your entire team? So Dan, thank you for that. Just to highlight we learned I learned so much for this conversation. The five things that you had talked about recently qualify icebreaker relevant, challenge them and then the ask all of this, you can learn in much, much deeper depth in Dan's course, I highly recommend you check it out. I will have that in the show notes. It'll be super easy. Just click you can get to the course and you can start actually implementing this in your company. So Dan, with that, I'm sure that people might have questions. They might want to reach out to you where's the best place that they can connect with you as
place and I'm sure you guessed it is on LinkedIn. Awesome calm you