EP218 – How to Prospect on LinkedIn
with Sam Rathling and Ian Luckett

IAN: In this episode of the IT Experts podcast, we're going to help you work out how to prospect on LinkedIn.

INTRO: Welcome to the IT Experts podcast, the only podcast to help MSPs scale to 1 million and if already there, get to 5 and go fast. At the end of the day, isn't it all about building a business that works for you rather than you for it? I hope you enjoy the show.

IAN: So good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome to the IT Experts podcast. And again, and in short succession, I had to, I had no option but to invite the incredible Sam Rathling, the LinkedIn guru, the queen of LinkedIn back on the podcast. Good morning, Sam. How are you doing today?

SAM: I am great. Thanks Ian. Thanks for having me back so quickly.

IAN: No problem. Well, look, we got so much feedback from the last podcast. It was absolutely incredible and I got off it buzzing and as soon as I got off it with all the notes that I'd made, I was straight onto our client saying, guys, this is the latest thing, this is what we need to do with LinkedIn. So I was super, super excited about it. And while I was talking to Sam, you know, going through the podcast, so go back and check out that previous episode and that was kind of like LinkedIn 101 for 2025. And it was really powerful. And today we're going to go into a little bit more detail about some of the actions you can take to turn these connections into clients. So Sam, before we get further on, if people haven't checked out that other episode, which I'm now need to find the number of what we're doing. Tell everybody, who are you, what you do and who do you help?

SAM: So my name is Sam Rathling. I'm a LinkedIn sales navigator and social selling strategist. So I help corporate and enterprise companies to leverage their people. So their sales team, their marketing team, and their customer facing people, as well as their leadership teams to actually embrace their own personal brands within a much bigger corporate brand. And I help them to raise brand awareness and primarily to build their sales pipeline because ultimately, you can all be doing activity on LinkedIn, but really it's about driving real results and pipeline and leads and opportunities and that's what I help companies to do.

IAN: Fantastic. And you've worked with some rather large organizations, haven't you?

SAM: Just a few, yeah. I did a three year social selling program with Brother Across Europe and America work with their direct sales team and their channel sales team. I think about 180 sales people and then we work with marketing and I also did a session for their leadership team. So that was a amazing project. I work with companies like MasterCard, FedEx, Activision, Blizzard, Profits, like lots of, lots of different companies, but lots of brand names that people would know.

IAN: Lovely stuff. That episode is episode 214, which you need to go back and listen to, which is how to leverage LinkedIn, which is one I was just talking about, Sam. So go and listen to that first. Well, you can stay, listen to this if you want, but the other thing as well, I have got a little treat for our vendors and our distributors today. I know this is for MSPs, but I could not I could not pass this opportunity of talking to Sam. And she just shared with you some of the big organizations she's worked with on how to help our vendors to prospect and connect and build relationships and educate our MSPs. So we're going to have a little bit at the end of the show, particularly for the vendors, which is the first time we've ever done this. But I just, you know, the other day I was on a call with a guy and it shocked me because he said, do you know what, Ian? I get more phone calls from our vendors trying to sell me stuff every day than I do for my clients and he runs a bloody help desk. And it's like, if we can do something to help everybody else win, we've got to include it into this show. So this is all about Lead generation. It's all around you know, their sales and marketing element on it. And if within your MSP, you're a bit unsure on where you're sitting and how's the business performing and everything like that, then I will invite you to go and take the MSP scale your MSP quiz the link is going to be in the show notes here and it takes a couple of minutes to do. You get a score, you get a personalized report, and you'll get to see exactly where you need to focus on. So, Sam, let's just get straight into this. Prospecting on LinkedIn, we've got loads of connections sitting out there. We're putting out a bit of content and there's various different things that people are kind of doing. Give us some of the principles around, you know, what does good LinkedIn practice look like in terms of connecting with the right people, the type of content that you're putting out there? Because the prospecting part is where we're now going to be moving towards people to start a conversation to build a relationship and it's like the first handshake at the networking meeting, right? But what do people need to do before that so that they get, you know, the best out of the further, the following conversations?

SAM: So I think the first thing, before you even think about prospecting, is looking, taking a step back and looking, actually, what do I even look like? As in, what's my profile saying about me? Because, you know, if you're going to go to a networking event and you're going to go shake someone's hand, you're not going to show up in your scruffiest clothes, or looking like you do on a weekend, maybe. You're going to look the part, and you're going to show up, and you're going to be presentable. So, your profile can be the difference between someone accepting your connection request and not. So if you're going to prospect people in your target market, you've only got a couple of seconds really to make a first impression and your profile is almost like your digital reputation and it's networking for you 24/7. So when you're asleep, when you're in meetings, when you're doing podcasts, whatever it is that you're doing in your day, your profile is out there networking for you. It's your to the world. So I'd recommend taking a step back from your own profile, but also the whole of your team and looking at what do we actually look like as a business online on LinkedIn? Because if you're going to prospect, I know 150 people in a week, you want to make sure that you're getting a minimum 50% of those people accepting your connection reques, and quite often people's acceptance rates are down in the kind of 20, 30, 40% and they're not maximizing the opportunity to connect. So the profile really needs to not be a CV. It doesn't need to be like, if you're in, if you have people in a sales function in your MSP and they're prospecting, if they have anything like sales, business development, account manager, or anything that relates to selling, and it's on their professional headline, or it's the first thing that people read, you're instantly going to be repelling those prospects, because they're just like, well, this person's clearly just going to try and sell to me. So the profile really needs to speak to your ideal client and really communicate the pain points that you solve and really be very customer focused. So that would be the first step in getting prospecting right. You know, track and measure how, how are we doing like if you send 100 connection requests out, you want to be getting at least 50 of them saying yes, connect. But if you're not anywhere near that level, something is fundamentally wrong with either the profile and or the approach that you're actually going for as well.

IAN: Okay, no, that's cool. And lovely statement that you made on the last show, and I'm relying on your memory. What's the two reasons why people are on LinkedIn, Sam?

SAM: Either because they're bored or they're trying to sell something.

IAN: I absolutely love that. I just absolutely love that people, I've been repeating that for, since we spoke last. And people just look at me and go, really? I'm going, yeah, really? Absolutely. So we've got a good profile set up. We've got, okay, let's just assume we've got this good profile set up. They've listened to episode 214. They've listened to exactly what they need to do last time. We've got a clear target market. We've got some nice educational content going out regularly, which is giving some good information about what you do and how you overcome the business problems that your target market have. Now let's talk about what is the difference, between inbound and outbound prospecting and why do we need to do both?

SAM: So inbound is the one that everyone loves, right? It's where you're getting people coming to you saying, Oh, I've been following you on LinkedIn. Can we have a conversation? And it's great, but it's not reliable. As in, you can't predict how many inbound leads you're going to get this month or this year. And you can't predict who they're going to be. You have no control over who it is that's going to reach out to you. So it's quite reactive. And it doesn't, it is quite often what a lot of people rely on. And if you're going to be hitting targets this year and scaling your MSP this year, you can't solely be relying on referrals and you can't solely be relying on inbound because neither, although they're great and they often convert quite high, they aren't there, they should almost be like the cherry on the top. So you also need to be doing the outbound activity and outbound is where you're in control of how many new connections you are adding into your network, exactly who it is you're targeting. And you're in complete control as to how many, you know, as to what that looks like. So if you know your numbers in terms of how many new leads do you need every month, and how many meetings do you need to have every month, you can almost work it backwards and make sure that your outbound prospecting is aligned with your business goals. And then once you have got your outbound in place you need to make sure that whatever campaign or whatever messaging you're going to send to those people is actually going to result in response because most people are trying to do outbound but they get little or no response and they either give up or they just go well this doesn't work or they just keep doing it and it's ineffective.

IAN: I know there's, there is a hundred ways to send a different message, but what are some of the principles on you know on sending those messages to try and get people into a conversation? Because some of the horrific ones that I've heard is, Hey, we're in the same group. Hey, I used to know you back in the da, or, Hey, you know... What is the things that's working right now in terms of messaging?

SAM: So if you'd have asked me this question a couple of years ago or pre lockdown, I would have said, you know, always personalize the connection request and make sure it's really tailored to the person. But now, actually, the best method of that first connection is to not send any note at all. You'll actually get a better acceptance rate by not sending a note with the connection request than sending one with it and there's, which is great from a time efficiency perspective. The reason being that most people assume that if you do write a note with your first message that you're just immediately going to get pitched with the second one, once you're connected. So you're better off to not say anything and actually just get the connection requests out. Then, and then use the first time you messaged them as the first chance to actually, you know, start a conversation because at least then they're in your network. And even if they don't respond to the first message, they're at least going to see your content. You're now connected to them. You've got an opportunity to nurture that connection over time, versus if you send a note and they say ignore or they don't accept it, that's it, you've lost that opportunity altogether. So that would be the first thing is to say that's current best practice.

We're in early 2025, so that would be currently the best way to approach. The second step, once you have got the connection is largely dependent on what you're out, what outcome you want. So there are probably seven different outcomes that you could have from a direct message. So one could be, well, I want brand building opportunities. So that could be, I want to be on more podcasts or I want to get more speaking opportunities or, you know, brand building opportunities like that. In which case you're going to target a certain type of person and you're going to message in a specific type of way. So that's one type of campaign or one kind of outcome, another outcome might be... Well, actually, I want someone to come to an event I'm running, and we talked about events on the last, so that could be another opportunity as a direct message is to first start by inviting them to, I don't know, a workshop or a free webinar or something like that. Another one might be, well, actually, I want to build my email list and I know you're, you're big on that. I'm big on that, so giving something of value first to build the relationship in order to in exchange get their email address. So that's a nice way to start as a, as a give rather than a get. What you don't want to do is go straight in for a, let's have a meeting because you literally have no relationship built. It's completely cold contact. And why is somebody going to give you their time? And which is their most precious asset if they don't know who you are. So, you know, there are multiple ways to start a conversation. And, you can ask intelligent questions. You can use pain points. There's so many different ways that you can approach direct message. But the key thing in all of this is to just cut through the noise because there are. Probably 10 to 20 messages a day hitting the inboxes of your decision makers that you're trying to reach. If you are one of 50 to a hundred messages that that person has received that week, if it's the same old, same old that everybody else is sending, you know, they're just going to delete it or ignore it and it's just not going to happen. So you've got to do things differently.

IAN: Do in mails work whenever, you know, you sort of see this in mail, which is part of the sales navigator package, isn't it? It's kind of like a premium where you can directly email, you know, or connect with people who are not your first degree connections. I always sort of feel these are a little bit super, super salesy. Is that your kind of view on that?

SAM: I 100 percent agree with you. Yeah, in my opinion, they just scream, I'm trying to sell you something. So, I don't recommend using them, even when I'm working with big companies that have paid a fortune for Sales Navigator for their teams. I still don't train sales people to use InMails. Unless they have met the person, know them, and they guarantee that they're going to accept. Because it does directly impact your social selling index. If you get a minimum 10% If you get 10% minimum acceptance on InMails then that does help your SSI score. So I would only use an in mail if I know for sure, like I've had a meeting with someone and I'm going to send them a follow up connection request. I might use an in mail to do that because I know that they're going to connect with me. But other than that, I would never use them for prospecting because they just scream. I'm going to sell you something. And if the person that you're receiving it and says, I don't want to, I want to ignore this email that person again, is never in your world. They aren't connected, they don't become a first degree connection. So you've again, lost an opportunity to nurture that person in your network, through your content and through your brand building. So, so no, I don't, I don't like them. I'm not a fan. Sorry.

IAN: And is it best to use cause good old LinkedIn is so amazing. You've got two inboxes, haven't you? If you've got a team who are going through sales navigator and they're connecting with people on sales navigator you can then have an inbox in sales navigator and then you have another inbox in your main, LinkedIn. Is it best practice to use just the main one in LinkedIn or what's your suggestion on that?

SAM: I would recommend if you're prospecting and you have sales nav that you do all your prospecting business development inside sales navigator, cause it just keeps it all separately. It doesn't, sometimes they do kind of transition across into LinkedIn, which is a bit annoying, but from a time efficiency, you want to be building lists in sales navigator of your target market and then sending messages to you to those lists within sales now, because you can then control that and manage the inbox much more effectively. And you kind of keep all your biz dev completely separate over there...

IAN: Which is all in one place and then when you've got the, because the connection request, those messages all come into your main inbox, don't they?

SAM: So the person on the receiving end won't know the difference. So they won't know that you've sent a connect request from SalesNav. They'll just receive it like a normal connection. So, it's important to keep it separate, if you are doing a lot, you know, if you're in a business development function or you're in a sales role or you're a business owner that's responsible for selling, then it's much easier to keep it all separate over there.

IAN: And that's one of the things that you help businesses with is it understanding how to use sales navigator, how to build the right list, how to talk to those lists, what you need to do. And then you've, I guess you've got the content and the activity on the social feed that then reinforces the brand and everything else. It's easy, isn't it? It's just like so straightforward, isn't it? I don't know why we're making this so hard work.

SAM: I know, it’s so easy. Not...

IAN: So what types of campaigns can, MSPs, you know, use? So say we've got a, you know, we may or may not have, a safe list into sales navigator, but they've got a target market they've got a nice tight profile. I know we spoke about some of the messages, but what's some of the successful things that the MSPs and it service businesses can use to attract and prospect into their target market.

SAM: I think one of the key things is thinking like, how can I actually add value to this person? Like, what are they going to respond to? That's going to be useful. So you mentioned already, you've got your you know, at the beginning of the show, you talked about, you know, if you're looking to scale your MSP, like there's a, there's free quiz that you can take, et cetera. So what is the equivalent for an MSP of that? Is it an audit? Is it a review? Is it something that's going to help? So think about what's going to actually add value and help your prospect and come at LinkedIn with a giving mindset, not a getting mindset. So most people come to LinkedIn thinking, what can I get from LinkedIn? Like how many people can I sell to? What can I get versus going to it with a, how can I add value? How can I give? So think about what's a give for your prospects? Like what would they find super helpful? So You know, I might give away like some prospecting tips, for example, to sales leaders, and it's something that they can use for them and their team, and it's a free tool that they can, you know, and that's my first relationship build is to give them something that they will find helpful and their team will find helpful. So what fight, figure out what that is for you, because if you can start a conversation with offering something that they're going to find helpful, it's far more effective than going straight in for a, you know, to rev, you know, to go and try and, you know, become, you know, get the supplier out and, you know, they're not going to jump straight from, if you think about it and they're not going to jump straight from whoever's doing their it at the moment to, you know, to a new supplier, just because you sent them a connection request, you've got to have this, almost this. The amount of time they spend with your brand and the amount of touch points that they have with your brand is important. So if you can give them something of value, that means they're spending time with your brand and they're seeing you as someone who's helpful to them. That's a good way to start a relationship.

IAN: And then, you know, we did talk about this on the other show, didn't we? Cause videos are really big thing right now, isn't it? So when, you know, I think , you know, we talked about touch points and you superseded it with. Kind of like time on content dwell time. I think was the term that you use. It's like the more time that you can spend. Because the other thing to, to remember as well is, is that, you know, as an MSP, you can be asking a meeting up with someone who may be an absolute bang on target market, but they've still got two and a half years to run with their shoddy MSP who they've just unfortunately signed up to. So how do you, you know, selling the next step is, how do you then get them onto your email list? So you can then nurture them. Keep them warm and still invite them to events and all of this type of things. And that's, it's kind of a really big circular effort, isn't it?

SAM: Yeah, it is. And I think, you know, and that's part of that, you know, build the relationship piece. You've got to nurture them during that time when they are tied to somebody else. And you, this whole thing around social selling is, is about staying top of mind. So your content helps you stay top of mind. The more value you bring to the newsfeed and to them, the more they're going to think of you first when they are annoyed or frustrated at their current provider, or when they're coming up for renewal, or when they're coming up to that point where they're like, actually, we do need to change who we're working with, the more you can stay top of mind, the better.

Speaking of video, like there's, that's another way to really stand out in the inbox is to. I call it prospecting in Technicolor. So using voice notes and using video messages instead of sending what everybody else does, which is a text message, not a text message, but you know what I mean? Inside LinkedIn, most people send written communication, but you can send gifts, you can send documents, you can send videos, you can send photos, you can send you know, you can send voice notes and they're a much more effective way of getting across your message doing something different. Hardly anybody uses voice notes and videos, especially in your industry. You know, people are just not thinking about how they can cut through that noise. My business partner, Nick, he's a CEO of multiple companies and he gets, I think around 50 to 60 messages every 48 hours. But within that, there'll always be at least one video or voice. And that's usually the only one that he will listen to because or watch because it's somebody trying to do something different. So, you know, if you're already using voice notes and WhatsApp and messenger and there's no harm in you dropping a little 30 second like voice message or something. Quite often the prospect has never seen a voice note on LinkedIn and they'll curiosity. Oh, what's that? I didn't even know you could do that. And they'll hit play. And it's about making sure that you're communicating the right things inside that voice note or inside that message, you know?

IAN: Absolutely. So if we've got on the feed, if we're using different images, you know, blogs, articles, newsletters. I'm going to come back to that one in a minute. You know, videos to reinforce what we're doing over there. And then you're having a conversation whether you're either, you know, the thing that makes me laugh sometimes is people absolutely fixated on getting someone's email address. We'll get in someone's email address is a bit, I think is a bit like walking into again, a networking room and say, give us 50 quid. It's a big, it's a big bit of currency. And if you've got your sales nav set up correctly and you give someone a PDF, a cheat sheet, a download, whatever it might be, but you just put that document into LinkedIn.

Do you know who's got it? Yes. How many actual clients as an MSP need to transform their business? The answer is on average one a month, maximum one a month. So when we roll that one back, as long as you're having 20 or 30 different conversations, you're good, you're doing all right. You don't need hundreds of thousands of leads in HubSpot to make a massive different in your MSP. This is about laser shooting. So, you know if you're nervous about someone, sign up, but then, oh god, I've got to put my bloody email address in. I know they're going to spam me. Give them the document. Put it in, you know, and then just keep them in another, list in SalesNav so that you kind of know what's happening in there.

Newsletters.

SAM: Yeah.

IAN: Good, bad or ugly.

SAM: I'm a big fan of newsletters actually on LinkedIn. I actually got given access to them way before everybody else did. I was one of the first. Yeah, I got sometimes when they roll out new features, they have like a beta group and I was one of the first I got in 2020. I've got newsletters and I ignored it for a few months, which I'm a bit annoyed about. But I have one now, I have nearly 10, 000 subscribers to my LinkedIn newsletter. And I, the reason I like them is because when people sign up for a Normal newsletter or a normal email list, they tend to use an email that is not their main work email. They'll use like a Hotmail or an a OL? They'll use like an old, and it's one that they hardly ever check, and they just put any e put any old email address in versus a LinkedIn newsletter. They sign up through LinkedIn and when your newsletter goes out, it hits the inbox that they u they get all there LinkedIn notifications in, so you know that they're going to be reading it and I get a very, very high open rate on my newsletters on LinkedIn because it notifies people on the newsfeed. So you have to publish it to the newsfeed as a piece of content. You also get a notification bell saying saying like this person's just published a new newsletter and then it goes out in email as well. So you have like these multiple places where somebody can get notified about it. I actually like to use mine to cross pollinate my actual email address as well. My email list as in not my non LinkedIn one. So I might include some downloads or some things that they can access in my LinkedIn newsletter that takes them across to my off LinkedIn. And it's another way to get eyeballs on content that people might have missed because the algorithm doesn't serve up every piece of content to every single person. So I might fill my newsletter with things like, oh, here's five posts that you might have missed in the last month. And it's an opportunity for me to link back to posts that I've, so I don't, essentially I don't have to create much content for my newsletter because it's just filled with, you know, posts that I might, they might have missed, it's full of, you know, downloads that I've already got available for them. I might do a bit of an update on what we've been doing I'll give people an opportunity to book a strategy call off the newsletter. So I'll typically get quite a few meetings from people that just read the newsletter. They actually, it's ready for, I'm ready to have a chat with Sam. So I find them quite good for lead generation. And I find them quite good for cross pollinating my, and I do it the other way as well. I make sure people on my actual list know that I've got a LinkedIn newsletter. So I'm actually a bit of a fan. You can actually do them now from a company page. So you can do them as a person. So I have one that's Like from Sam Rathling, called Social Selling with Sam. And I don't have one yet for my company page because I'm waiting for my followers to increase to a number. I'd be like, okay, I'm ready to publish one now. But if you have a decent size following on your company page, your company can also now publish a newsletter too, to your existing followers. Which people don't, might not realize. I actually like them, I think they're a good feature

IAN: How often would you do a newsletter? Is it a monthly thing, a weekly thing, or what's the best frequency?

SAM: I say that mine is monthly, but I don't, I don't get chastised by LinkedIn if I don't send one out. So I, mine's probably once every six to eight weeks. Realistically, I've probably done about, I think I'm on episode 20, or not episode, but I'm on like edition 26. That's the one. So I, probably wasn't as like, obviously, with everything I had going on health wise last year, I didn't publish as many, but every four to six weeks is kind of what I aim to do or if I've got a big announcement, like if I've got a book coming out or I've got something that list is very loyal, subscribed people. The first time you publish as well, which is another thing I love about it, is that you, your addition goes to every single follower you have. So the first time you publish a newsletter, let's say you've got 5, 000 connections, every single one of your 5, 000 connections will be reminded that you exist and will be invited to subscribe to your newsletter. So, You can pick up probably a thousand subscribers just from your first one. 20% of the people that you publish to you'll, you'll pick up probably 15, 20% immediately just because people follow you and they know who you are. So you're not starting from a, from scratch. And then every time you make a connection, so back to prospecting, When you connect with someone, they're also invited automatically to subscribe to your newsletter. So if I connected with you and we weren't connected, I said, you know, you'll accept my connection request and automatically, you'll be invited to subscribe to my newsletter. So it can grow organically without you having to build the list

IAN: Good. I'm glad I asked. I think that was quite a good thing. And I think what you've just, you know, reinforced as well is, is that there's not, you know, it's unlikely that you're going to put one post out on LinkedIn or one email and someone's going to come along and go, yes, I'll buy what you need. And I think, you know, going through the different direct messaging, the connections, the content, the email. You know, I was talking to someone the other day and someone said, well, how do you measure marketing these days? And it's like, well, it's really hard because at the top of funnel, there's so much stuff and noise and platforms and everything that's going on. It's kind of, you need, as much and as many and as far and as varied as possible to stay ahead of everybody else. And then having that compelling messaging and that compelling, you know, reason to get in contact with you and. for want of a better phrase, a smack in the face moment to go, Oh my God, what they've just said to me, I need what they do. Let's have a conversation.

SAM: Yeah.

IAN: And then it kind of goes in from there, doesn't it?

SAM: Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, obviously with the kind of length of sales cycles that you're dealing with as MSPs and the fact that, you know, that all majority of the people you're contacting are already buying what you sell, but somewhere else. So I think it's just about really pulling in on those kind of what are the, what are the frustrations and pain points and challenges that they're probably having with their existing provider that are going to just be really frustrating to them and really tapping into like why, how easy it is for someone, to transition and change. So I think a lot of people are reluctant to change. So I think it's a massive upheaval. So doing a lot of education on things like that. So I have an article that's like 10 things to look for when you're hiring a LinkedIn and social selling expert. And of course it's like 10 things that I know I tick the box on, but I would be putting out content that's very educational around, you know, the 10 things to consider when you're changing, you know, like when you're changing it provider or the, you know, I would just be putting tons of high value, helpful content out there that people go, wow, this person really is giving me tons and they're giving me way more than my, current provider. I'm not even paying. Do you know what I mean? It's that almost, I always want to make sure that my free stuff is way better than everybody else's paid stuff. So if you think about how you come up with content or the types of helpful things you could be writing about, or you could be educating on and think, well, this is just basic stuff that everyone should be giving their clients anyway. But maybe they aren't getting it from their existing provider.

IAN: No. And that is one of the things that we hear is, is that if you do exactly what Sam's just said, it's almost like you've been sitting on a fly on the wall in the office in here, Sam, actually, and you give them that value because what you want them to do is you want them to go. I'm not getting that my current MSP doesn't do this, this doesn't work like this, this doesn't work like that.

So Sam, absolutely amazing. Right. Let's change direction for a little bit. Let's help the vendors out here. Right. So you've just really great principles around some of the prospecting tactics here for MSPs to go and find their customers and their clients, let's help the vendors out a little bit here. So there is a perception in the channel that You just bring people up and they buy stuff from you and that's kind of like the way it goes more and more. I talked to vendors quite a lot more and more, they are all saying the right words and the words are we want to build trust in the community. We want to help MSPs to understand, you know, how they can grow their businesses, overcome their problems, blah, blah, blah. You know, and obviously if we can use our technology. So I think that we've got this movement now where a lot of the marketing and a lot of the business development people at the top are starting to get it, but the salesmen who were on targets and I know, I do know what we might be going down a rabbit hole. We can't fix it, but I'll be very, very surprised, but the salesmen are still brash. Buy this stuff, buy that stuff, buy this stuff, buy that stuff... How should, and you know, these are large corporate businesses, how should a large corporate business use LinkedIn and, you know, the fundaments for what they need to do in 2025 to win more businesses from MSPs.

SAM: So I think the point you made there is that a lot of the people that are selling on behalf of these vendors are acting and looking like salespeople. So the first thing I would recommend that they do is not do that. So as in, you know, of course their job is to sell, but the minute that they come across in that way through direct messaging, through the phone, through how they show up on platforms. They're just immediately repelling and they're just being the same as everybody else. So again, it comes back to they need to take ownership as individuals of their own personal brands and almost switch from being like the salesperson that repels people to actually being a trusted advisor and a brand ambassador for that business that can be trusted, that can be seen as someone that does add value, that does want to build a relationship with their customers. So it comes back to, although they represent this bigger brand, you know, they are individually, each one of them, they are like a brand ambassador for that particular company. So The first thing I would say, like, definitely don't act like a salesperson. They need to really think about, okay, how do I want to show up? Do I want, how do I want to be seen? Two MSPs and two people that are going to buy from me and really think about their values and how they do want to be perceived and actually then start to flip that into their, how they show up online, because I did an article yesterday actually called 13 words to transform your personal brand. And actually a lot of salespeople in the channel and for vendors can probably learn something from that because ultimately they, you know, how you show up and your personal brand and how you write content and how you approach prospects is either going to repel them or it's going to attract them. And when we talk about social selling, I'm like, you're far better off to build a network of potential prospects and actually attract people towards you rather than trying to kind of be this hunter. Like there's someone that sees LinkedIn as this place to pitch and spam. And I think that a lot of them just go, oh, it's a numbers game. And they're quite often, it's not their fault. Like it's, they've been trained that way. Whoever is in that, those organizations is saying, you throw enough mud out there, something's going to stick. And they just see it as a numbers game. And I think they need to almost like strip it back and go, okay, this is about building relationships. It's about nurturing, adding value. So all the things we've talked about, but a salesperson can do that for their own personal brand as well. Of course, as a business owner, you want to be like that, but a salesperson needs to be thinking like a business owner. They need to be owning their personal brand and approaching. Selling in a way that is not how everybody else does it.

IAN: And is that what you find when you work with some of these larger corporates is that the perception and the culture, I think is probably the right word is the it's, yeah, this is a numbers game guys go and smash enough people over the head. And some of them are going to buy from you have to turn that round.

SAM: Yeah. I mean, in some cases, not all cases in quite a lot of cases, actually, I feel like. A lot of salespeople are relying on marketing actually to feed them leads. And they aren't owning the fact that actually it's their job to create opportunities and their job to do that. So, so I think you get a mixture of, you kind of get the skeptical ones that just don't think anything's going to happen from LinkedIn and they just, they're just like lurking in the background and doing nothing. And then you do, you know, and then you can have others that are like very smart with it. And, you know, I teach all the things we've just talked about, like the one to gravitate to things like voice and video, and actually want to build a relationship with people and do things differently. I think that's the way from a sales perspective to cut through the noise. Like if you've got a really personalized video message from a smart salesperson that was talking all about how all about you and the challenges that they can solve and the fact they want to build a relationship with you, you're more likely to listen to that than just somebody who is just sending you a, you know, a box standard sales pitch in your inbox or trying to pick up the phone to you and cold call you. So I think it's, there's lots of SDRs out there who are doing a really, really good job and they are understanding that social selling is about building relationships and it's not about throwing as much mud out there and seeing what sticks, so...

IAN: Fantastic. And you've got just behind each of your ears, some amazing books all around social selling. Haven't you? And, it was like earrings for you there for those who are on audio and not watching it, not watching it on YouTube.

Brilliant. Thanks very much for listening to the show. I hope you enjoyed it again, the amazing show with Sam here thank you very much for everybody's support that they have given over growth of the podcast and please leave a rating. Please leave a review. Please subscribe because it's going to help us to get other amazing guests. like Sam to come and make the show even bigger and better. So Sam, once again, thanks very much for your time today. Please let us know you've given so much to the show. Please, Shameless plug, pitch, how can you help the MSPs and the vendors out there? What is it that you've got for them today?

SAM: Well, I think that, you know, if you're listening to this and you say, actually, I think Sam might be able to help us. I offer a few free strategy calls every single month. So the best thing is just drop me a DM at DM on LinkedIn and just say listen to the IT Experts Podcast. I'd like to take advantage of one of your free strategy calls and then that's kind of where we go from there, really. You know, every comp, every company is different in terms of what their needs are. So I'm not going to sit here and plug all the different services that I have, but that's usually where I start with most people. So that would be the best thing.

IAN: And, learn from the language that she used there. It's really simple, really straightforward. There's no landing pages, hooked wires, trips, whatever you want to call it. Just DM. Simple as that.

Sam, all the success for 2025. She was telling me earlier on before we started the show about her 18 year old son who she has got in meetings prospecting on LinkedIn. I mean, what an amazing life.

SAM: I know it's amazing.

IAN: All right. So I wish you all the success, with everything you've got planned for this year with your health, your wealth and all of the happiness as well. So that's all good stuff. So thanks again. I look forward to catching up with you all soon. Take care now. See you soon.

OUTRO: Hang on a minute. Just before you go, and if you're curious about how this episode links with the ability to scale your MSP to a million or, or if you are already there, accelerate to five, then we wanna invite you to come and take the MSP Mastery quiz. And in just three minutes, you're gonna get a 360 degrees scan of your business where you can identify the one or two tactics that can help you find more time engaging along your people and help generate more leads in your MSP. It's really simple. Just click on the link in the show notes. And if you have enjoyed this episode, we'd love to get some feedback from you by means of a rating review on Spotify your podcast platform of choice. We really appreciate every single one of them. Now you can go and enjoy the rest of your day and we look forward to catching up and connecting with you soon. All the best.