Want to switch from LinkedIn lurking to creating, but don't know where to start? You do now: it's with this podcast episode.

Darryl is joined by Daniel Disney, sales author/speaker/trainer and Founder of The Daily Sales. With over 850k brand followers and close to 100k personally, there's no better man to help you start, or step up, your LinkedIn game–especially in the sales space. In this sparkling meeting of the minds you'll learn about: the key steps for growing at any follower count, the content you should (and shouldn't) be creating, and industry-wide challenges like attribution and authenticity.

🔗 LINKS

It goes without saying, but the best place to find Daniel is on LinkedIn. You'll also find him at the Daily Sales website. Find his latest book is on Amazon here.

Connect with Darryl on LinkedIn. Find the LinkedIn profile book he mentioned here.

Watch the Darryl vs Daniel debate here, and watch Darryl's webinar with Keenan on authenticity here.

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Are you in sales, but you're not using a sales engagement tool? Then you're probably losing out on revenue because you are not engaging with prospects at the right time, with the right cadence, and with enough persistency. You need VanillaSoft.

INSIDE Inside Sales is now a member of the Sales IQ Network. We partner with SDRs and leaders of SDRs to help them be the best professional salespeople they can be. Find out more by checking out our Create Pipeline Course.

How is it going to everybody? Another episode here are the Inside Inside Sales Show. I am so glad you're back and I'll tell you why. I'm glad, because you're tuning in and it's going to be a special episode. It's gonna be a special episode for a lot of reasons. I get to hang out today with a, a dude. A fellow another member of the Commonwealth a lad who has walked very much alongside of me and my journey in the last five or so years.

Well, he himself has had a fantastic journey. So let me set the stage a little bit. And then, and then I'll, I'll let you know who this character is. You all know him, and if you don't, you have been living under a rock. Yes. That's my teaser today. Kids were with royalty. Okay. Just hold that thought. I'm gonna go back in time and I'm going back in time to share a story with you.

If you've not, if you've not heard this story, I think I've shared it, but it's been a long time when I first joined VanillaSoft. Obviously now I'm a , but when I first joined VanillaSoft, you know, give or take five years. About three months into the gig. I went to my CEO and I said here's the thing, Mr.

CEO, people, these days, aren't buying from nameless, faceless corporations, they're buying from other people. So even though I Daryl, you know, was representing VanillaSoft just like you Johnny and Sally sales rep are representing your specific employer. People don't buy from the nameless entity. They buy from you, Johnny and Sally, that's who they buy from.

And I said to my CEO at the time, I said, we need to establish a brand, a voice, a personality, a subject matter experts on behalf of our company that people can connect with and relate to. And that person will become not only a source of. New leads, but there'll become a source of objection handling as they start to wonder, is this the right company?

I want to buy this solution, the service from await. I know that personality. I liked them. Yes. This is the company I want to buy it from. And and my CEO looked at me and he said, so what are you saying? I'm saying nobody here is stepping up to be that voice and that personality. So I'm thinking it's gonna be.

I will do it. That was my job. I was hired there as a CMO at the time I did eventually become the CRO. And I said, I think it's me. And he's like, so are you saying that now? We're not only are we investing in our. Social profiles and visibility and brand, but now we're investing in Darryl Praill and I said, yes.

And he had this look of sheer pain on his face. And I said, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I will have some notoriety, some success that you will have paid for. And then I will leave or that it will become Darryl Praill and not VanillaSoft. And he's like, yes, to all of that. And I said, I'll manage that and don't worry, I'm not going to leave.

And if I am going to leave, you should pay me more money in that problem goes away. So there we go.

Are you in sales, but you're not using a sales engagement tool? Then you're probably losing out on revenue because you are not engaging with prospects at the right time, with the right cadence, and with enough persistency. You need VanillaSoft. Go to vanillasoft.com.

So there you have it. That was the catalyst. And I recognize the time that for our audience, if you notice off LinkedIn was the right channel. Now maybe it's Instagram or maybe it's Facebook, or maybe it's Twitter. Maybe it's a combination thereof. Things have evolved since then, but I recognize that for that point in time, I don't to use LinkedIn as a glorified resume a CV.

And I really didn't have any expertise on how to do that. So I started reaching out to people who I could learn from on the fly. And that is what led me to this cat. And I recognized by studying. But he was, I saw some of what he was doing. He'll share some of his, his licenses today, but I recognize that one of the biggest things about social, if you're truly trying to build up your personal brand and your reach is that you can do that by leveraging other people's audiences.

All right. So it's not just about your brand. It's about your re. And so this fellow and I first got together in a grand debate and I was the most nervous I've ever been on. Nobody ever told him this. At my time at VanillaSoft, I was up against this fellow and we had over a thousand people online.

And the debate was, is it social selling? Or not, you know, it's socialist, I came Murphy verbatim, but it was about social selling. And it was like, is it really social selling? And I can tend to, at the time it was social marketing, this individual convener of social selling, and we had a fantastic conversation and I was so scared and we took a survey before we began about who we thought was going to win.

And we took a story afterwards and yes, he still wants. But it went from like being 90 to 10, that, that he was going to win to beat beam, like 55, 45, the end of the day that he's he wants. So I call that a victory and we've had a great friendship ever since then. I've been a big fan. He has been wonderful.

He's quoting me in a couple of his books where he gives me credit. Although, I don't think the most recent one because he's too big for me now. He's like a Hollywood. He's like Kanye meets Pete Davidson and I'm still, you know, I'm the guy in, in the, in the, in the cabin, by the pool. That's me. So, you know, life goes in different directions.

If you don't know who I'm talking about. Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. Daniel Disney, my friend. How are you?

It was the day before I was due to go on holiday. We had suitcases packed and I was like, right. I just need to do this debate before we fly. And, you know, take this family break. And I was nervous about a thousand people down. We had a huge crowd, but it was so much fun. I think what brings us together is our.

Passion for all things, sales, marketing, selling, social, everything. And so your friendship is extremely valuable to me. And I cannot wait to chat with you again and kind of get an update. Cause we haven't done this for a while.

You know, he was just. He got into sales at a young age, he had an uncle who was a big influence in his life, taught him some of the tricks of the trade. If I recall you were selling you were in a, in a major home fix-it store, teaching people how to build kitchens and, and whatnot and selling all that stuff.

So, you know, true, true grassroots selling. And what I love about Daniel's story is he's a self-made guy who figured this out on his own. And I mean, last I saw. You've got an audience over 800,000 people. And is that the right latest and greatest number is a bigger, like, what's it at right now?

Fantastic book that came out a few years ago now. And then most in the last year he had the ultimate LinkedIn sales guide. So I thought we'd keep today's conversation. Normally I like to have, you know, what's the takeaway, right? And I've got a theme and I thought today, because if you just hadn't talked in so long, you all can listen to that.

Jam. And, and we're just gonna talk about the state of social and, and what it means to sales and what's changed and what's not changed. So if that's okay with you, boys and girls I would multitask the same time, but I would do is I would go and follow Daniel on LinkedIn. All right, please do that. He's the king of social selling love that new banner you have on your, on your profile brother.

That's well done. You should go buy his books. There are, there are available in a, in a. EBooks if I recall, so you can get it either way. Although personally, I love the hardcover and the paperback, depending what you got. I have a personally signed copy, boys and girls. It's pretty cool. Okay.

With that, Daniel. So what, in the last, since COVID COVID came. Change the way things kind of went down. Communities got really big, it got loud, it got noisy. If we were starting from scratch today, we, you know, the URI, but nobody had the same success we had starting pre COVID doing all this community, building relationships.

What's changed. And what advice would you give today to somebody using LinkedIn or social selling as a channel that either that's different, that's different, that's different from what you might've given before. Let's go with that.

I think you need to find your voice, your thing, something different that you can bring to the table a lot quicker than perhaps you used to, but the formula still the same, you know, the activities are still the same. It's just, you need to stand out, which can be scary, but we're each individual. We each have our individual things we bring to the table, whether it's a red t-shirt.

Glorious white beard, you know, there's different things you can bring.

There are different types of people. There was no right or wrong. You've just got to do what you're comfortable with. At first, I think the key common denominator is be active on LinkedIn, whether that's consuming, whether that's creating, just start spending more time, being more consistent, whether you know what your voice is or you.

Just sitting on LinkedIn on a daily basis, that's going to help you find your place and build up that confidence.

I mean, Darryl, you've seen it. LinkedIn is growing. I mean, we are close to a billion users and. Heavy B2B, but it's now becoming B to C. It's just expanding massively. People are using it 24, 7 evenings weekends. You know, we are really, you know, engrossed in, in LinkedIn. So it is for everyone, but yes, if you are in SAAS even better,

So I'm talking to the marketers can talk in, cause I'm selling marketing tech and I'm not convinced that the marketing audience is as active or as tight as the sales. But that could be a by-product of the fact that a vast majority of my connections are sales centric. So maybe I'm mistaken, but I pull, I pause it to you are other buyers.

In my example, the marketing buyers are those communities. They're. Do you see a disproportionate bias and the sales buying community?

Number one, second place is marketing and I see this marketing content marketing thought leaders. You know, that whole section industry on LinkedIn is second place. And I would put sales in third place. It's close between sales and marketing. But I think marketing gets just that little bit more because LinkedIn is a social media network and is always going to have a bit of an edge from a marketing perspective.

But that's personally what I see to anyone listening or watching this. If you disagree, you know, feel free to hit us up in the messages and let us know your views. But that's, that's personally what I see

Question, let me throw one at you. I've never asked you this question before. I don't know how you're gonna react if you're going to just scrunch your eyes or not. All right. All right, I'm ready. Here we go. Add, cause we do all this. Obviously we do it for personal brand and credibility, but you also do this to generate, you know, obviously for a large part of new business.

Let's talk about dark social so we can get here. See you got it. I got an eyebrow. So let me explain for those who are wondering what dark social, this is dark social. There's a bit of a marketing term, but I know Dan is going to be there shortly. So dark social is the premise that content is made to be shared.

That's the first one you understand, you're making content. So it gets shared like a video or an ebook or something. When that gets shared. Eventually somebody clicks on that to see it, and it takes it into a company's website. So it could be in the bowels of a website because it's a, it's buried somewhere.

Right. You're sharing this piece of content. It's not the whole. Marketers like to know where their traffic comes from. So if it's coming to a landing page, like a webinar or the Ms. Oh, well that, that, you know, that, that attribution of our span, you know, we can say we've got ROI because of the traffic on that landing page.

Or if it goes to our homepage, when we say that's organic, you Google something, you found our homepage. But when it goes into the bowels of the website, well, we know you're not probably finding that by simple Google search. And we know. So how so it's not really organic. You got here somehow and how you got there was because that's where that piece of content that was shared when you clicked on took you to dark social.

I don't know where that came from. In other words, the piece of content you put out that got shared, shared, shared, shared again, A marketer wants to go and spend money. If I've got a whole bunch of traction on this, I want to spend more money on that, but it's dark, the dark social share. I don't, I don't know where to spend more money.

So the takeaway here to bring it back is I'm really asking you, what are your thoughts and the power of compelling content. That gets shared and reshared, and reshared to drive your own personal brand, your own personal reach and your pipeline building efforts is content that important or is content simply people being pithy with their leadership starts with you.

Stupid ass comments that annoys the hell out of me, nonstop.

At the minute I'm noticing a lot of, and I want to tread on this very sensitively, but the the over use of either serious personal challenges, mental health. Yeah, serious personal issues where I fully understand it's good to talk. It's good to connect and to give people a voice and to help connect other people in those scenarios.

I'm all for a genuinely. I do have sympathy and empathy. What I sometimes see is people overusing those things because they do drive viral engagement. And I think there is a risk if you do too much of that type of content. You'll grow a big audience and you'll get lots of engagement, but will that convert into business and to trust and to, you know, professional respect.

I think there's a very, there's a fine balance. And at the moment I see a lot of people maybe just pushing it for the engagement and then suggesting other people do the same thing. They get engagement. That's how you get engagement. Anyway, that's me just offloading one of my recent observations going off of your similar one around,

Suck it up. So does everybody else now only D only Benjamin Dan. And he could say that, right? Cause see, that's his ammo focus. He's the UK most hated sales trainer, but it was interesting to see the. And people had to that. So, but to your point, what I hate about what you're saying is how people are actually exploiting that for their own selfish gains, which is, I know what you're saying.

And I find that just obnoxious.

It's it's a very emotional journey. And so I get what causes people to think, oh, this has worked. Let's do more of this, but sometimes taking a step back and looking at that big picture and thinking. Long-term of the impacts when it ties into Daryl. And this will be my, hopefully my last complaint. I don't like to complain.

It's it taps into that mindset of it's who I am. And if you don't like it, go away. This is who I am. I can say what I want. I can do what I want, because this is me and this really bizarre ego driven, disguised as empowerment type mentality that is quite dangerous, especially whether you adapt it in real life or on social media.

I think. Yeah, it's risky. I see it a lot with when swearing was a bit of a hot topic and people would be like, it's okay, that's it. I swear. And if you don't like it, then go find someone who doesn't swear. And that's be really Frank with this, unless you have too much business and you're so rich and wealthy that you genuinely don't need more customers, which isn't those people.

Why would you want to scare people away? Why wouldn't you want to just tone it down? I don't know.

I'm like it was about his swearing. I helped me understand, and this has worked for you. And by the end, I'm swearing to not nearly as much as he's doing it. And he was like, see, you're doing it. It's just who you are. And not McNell I'm reacting. I am. I'm adapting to whom you are. Reality is, but the fact that is, I asked him that question.

Why would you want to potentially alienate business when it's so easily avoidable? And his response was just, this is who I am. You don't do business with me now. That's fine. And that's your choice. It's your choice. But I'm with you. I'm like, why, why, why would you literally put a roadblock in front of yourself and you don't have to.

But it was anyway, it was a great conversation. Check that out a couple of years old, but it was, good.

If they want to swear, I swear. I don't swear a lot, but I'll happily, but I'm not going to do it to offend them. I saw someone who said that very rude word on a social media post. And someone commented saying, you know, I've been buying from you for a couple of years. But I don't like that language and I won't buy from you again.

And it's right. You know, that was avoidable. That didn't need to happen. Anyway, we digressed we've gone off track. But we

Don't get us wrong, adding value. But at the end of the day, people are connecting with you because they value you as a person. It's a relationship, it's a selling, right? So you, you, you will attract the people that you, you know, the personality, you, you project a little bit. I project intentionally a somewhat more direct.

Speech. I'm not Benjamin den. He direct, but I am more a blunt person, Daniel projects, a very, very wise likable person. And that's whom he is. And he's in his 850,000 followers that says they liked that. Right. So there you go. Right? So it's the whole package and social. It is. It's a little complex. It's content.

It's value. It's personality. You know, I tell you folks, when I'm on social, I'm doing video. I'm wearing these glasses on purpose because they look good on video. These are not the classes I wear around the house. All right. So that gives you some context. I woke up this morning going, I'm going to be recording with Daniel Disney.

I better put on a shirt that makes me look, you know, 20 pounds lighter because that's what you do. Right. I don't have his svelte figure with social selling. So

I know it's a subliminal thing, but let's just go, are you talking about dark social? Does content work? How do you track it? And we were talking about this before we went live, you know, How can you measure it? You put out content, you know, it's hard to track it all the way. I think technology as you know, is going to, you know, fix some of those problems as time goes on.

Yes, it does have an impact. And whether you find a way to track it, will you try to track it? It is very visible when you have individuals, salespeople, SDRs, AEs, and companies growing audiences, 10 20, 30,000. Plus getting hundreds or thousands of likes on their comments, getting loads of messages on their inbox.

You know, the impact isn't just on them. It's around the whole company. Some companies don't even have that many followers on their company page. So it isn't too hard to see the impact content has personal branding has what I think we're in a transition stage of is how we measure that better and start to get a better understanding of it.

I understand that you're a company, you're a CMO, you're a CRO. You want to know what your spend is going on and what the ROI is. I think it's just a transition phase. Would you agree?

What advice guidance you have for me? Because I'm a little bit scared. I'm a little bit nervous and I'm not sure anybody wants to hear any content that I have to put out there. Boom go.

Then step two is an easy first step. Start scrolling through your feed. Two, three times a week. Find posts that connect with you that you enjoy and just start adding comments. Even if at the start, it just has to be great. Start with that, but then start to try and find ways to contribute, to add your thoughts or add your opinion to it or your experience, but just take it step-by-step . None of this happens overnight. You're not going to suddenly be able to create viral content. You take it step by step. And I think just by growing, consuming and starting with some engagement, we'll build the foundation of confidence that you can then grow on and hopefully you'll get to a point of.

Maybe I could post something. Maybe I could share this article and add my thoughts in its own original post. And before you know, it you'll be in a position where you're then comfortable to create something totally original. You know, it takes time. Don't stress about it. Just take it day by day. Just start doing little things: add a few people, read some content, start adding a few comments, start liking posts, just doing that is going to get your name out there and have a huge impact. But the consistency piece is the glue that kind of sticks it all together.

I will hear the pushback saying I don't want to talk about. Or I don't get engaged in, so I don't do it. And so a couple of things I say to people is this number one, I say, have a take, just have an opinion. All right. If all you're doing is liking comments and posts and that's it, that's your contribution.

And are you seeing atta boy? You know why bother? I mean, yes. You want to be seeing, you want to say good posts. You want to, you want to be social it's conversation, but eventually habitation, you know, why is it a good post group posts? I especially like this, right? Have a take that's the first part, second part is you don't know what.

Brothers and sisters, you are on the phone every day. You are sending emails every day. You are having conversations with your clients. Every single fricking day. Your boss is on your ass. I swore every single day saying, have you done this? Have you done that? Right? Every single one of those conversations, people are sharing with you, something you haven't updated.

The CRM with the close dates. My pipeline is stupid. There's a post. You know, how often should it be updated? Do you rely on the close date, right? What are best practices your customer is saying to you? I can't afford this right now because interest rates are going up and we have uncertainty was a post what's the impact of rising inflation and interest rates.

We've seen it on the supply chain. What is it on our actual sales cycle? You know, it just take inspiration from what you're living every single day, because that's what you know, best because you're dealing with it right now. Finally, you say you get no engagement. Daniel's given me the trick. It's often it's you engage in other people's posts that drives traction back to your posts.

But beyond that, understand that 90% Darryl Darryl step I don't think I'm pretty confident in this people on LinkedIn are lurkers. So even I can not tell you how many people I've had say wonderful things to me and buy from me. And they've never once commented on my stuff, but they know me because they read my stuff.

All right. So that's the power of that. Who does Daniel Disney to. And the social world to learn from who influences you? Who do you respect? Who tos content that you seek out?

And you know, networking, but I guess I seek more from sales leaders from real sales people. So the people that are using it, the people. You know, out there grinding and yeah, that list is ever changing. As you kindly said before we went live, I was named on Salesforce as top 29 thought leaders and there are some great people on there.

Scott Leese know, has been sharing some amazing content recently, Marcus Chan, again, really amazing content, Dale Dupree. I mean, there are loads out there. All bring different voices. And for me, it's great to see what they're doing and the content they're sharing the engagement it gets to then really take away.

Okay. What's working, what's not working. But yeah, I think it's a two-part process learn from great people, but learn from practice. You know, the best way to learn is by doing, trying testing you know, you'll learn a lot more from that.

It's the law. I, you know, me, Darryl you know, my journey. I wanted to create the most comprehensive book on selling social, selling, LinkedIn selling. That is it. And it's got a forward by Jeb Blount to top it off.

The success I started getting on LinkedIn all started because I bought a book called How to Write a Killer Profile by Brenda Bernstein. And that's all it was, it was just focused simply on the. And that automatically increased so many aspects of my search ability, getting found by recruiters, but more than anything, the remarks that have people saying, oh my gosh, your, your profile is stunning.

You must be somebody, even though I'm not. Was that book. It was a how to, so you get all that. What he's just talked about, plus everything else he's talked about on the Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide, he can get it on Amazon. It'd be a great birthday gift for yourself because Hey, you deserve to buy yourself a gift and everything announced.

Here's one thing I will tell everybody, I'm a big believer in, you've got to invest in your own success. All right. So it's not expensive. Buy the damn book because I'll tell you this. If you apply one thing in that book, that results in you getting one more commission check. I think there's a bit of an ROI there, so don't be stupid about it.

This is your career. The more success you have, the faster you grow in your career, the more you'll be promoted, all that wonderful stuff. The more money you get it's it's all goes back to the Ultimate LinkedIn Sales Guide.

Final question for you, Daniel. And by the way, that was not a commercial plug. That was me telling you. That's literally what I did. You get the right book it can tell you much. And then you see Daniel online. He's just going to reiterate what you've already read in the book and remind you why you need to do that as best practices. So no different than why you have a sales trainer now more than likely are you seek out sales.

They don't necessarily tell anything you don't know you've read or heard before, but they reiterate the importance of me. Can I do that? Yeah, I can. I'm going to finally make an effort to do that. That's why, why you want the book? Video video on LinkedIn used to be over the top and then it got scaled way back by algorithm.

Where are we today on video? Cause I just don't see it. Like I used

So. Just sharing video, not the best strategy, just sharing text posts, not the best strategy, try and do a bit of everything. One day text post one day image one day video. And that way you'll reach more people you'll get to benefit from all the different types of engagement, but with video because it's you, because they see you it's as close to face-to-face.

The conversion often is a lot higher than any other forms of content. So yes, you'll probably see lower engagement, but the impact is probably a lot higher. And I think. Moving forward, LinkedIn will start to really push the algorithm into it. So I think we'll start to see a growth and engagement as well.

There's AI tools I used to use uses up title all the time. So you have options. Check it out. We're way at a time I'm like five minutes over my allowance. I could have kept on talking to you forever. Daniel we need to do this again, not wait so long next time. Thank you so much, my friend, what, what is, what is the one thing everybody listening to this right now needs to go action right now and change or implement in their daily selling routine, as talked about in the ultimate LinkedIn sales guide.

Just those two things do it two to three times a week. Minimum. And within a few weeks, you will be surprised by the results, grow your network and start to find your voice, do those things. And you can thank me in a couple of months, time.

If you're not one of those, you are not with the cool kids. That's Daniel, I'm Darryl kids. Another week is in the bag. Will we see you here next week? I hope so. Take care. I'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.

This episode was digitally transcribed.