014: A Culture of Getting Results with LinkedIn and Video in the Sales Development Process with Jeremy Leveille

January 11, 2019
Podcast

Overview:

   

Jeremy Leveille sets sales appointments for a software product by recording himself playing guitar and creating music videos to send to his prospects. The kicker? The data tells us that his creativity works. And, he has a ton of fun doing it.

Simply put, our guest for episode 014 is a goofball, and he’s a master at his craft.

His experience allows him to be incredibly articulate about the power of Sales Development and Marketing functions working together towards a common goal.

Jeremy is the Sales Development Team Lead at LeadIQ, which is a software to help revenue-focused teams find verified sales prospect information online to keep CRM data fresh and actionable. Check their reviews on G2Crowd and their LinkedIn company page.

So, Jeremy’s target buyers are other sales reps just like him. Fitting.

   
   

Show highlights, with timestamp notes:

03:00 – Intro, Jeremy got interest in Sales and Marketing wanting to start in sports broadcasting, got internship, which turned into helping the sales team at the radio station. He gets success by being unique in his SDR persona, and in honor of his sports background he wears throwback sports jerseys. This has become part of his personal brand to be memorable to his prospects today.

 

06:30 – Jeremy regrets not focusing on business classes because the business acumen for sales is so important. Jeremy suggests knowing the basics of the industry, job titles, enterprise software, and what these things does for businesses as you are selling or marketing.

 

10:00 – Jeremy touches on how Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) must balance volume and personalization in outreach, and he gives tactical advice. Not just for rapport but personalize to the persona and the job function. For example, build a list of your top 30 best customers, and then look at each of their top 3 competitors (that’s 90 companies total. Now, you can tell a story about their specific landscape in the competitive space. Another example is that you can look at who YOUR target company sells to in order to go deeper.

 

15:00 – Tactically, we discuss how to manage volume and personalization. 5 minutes or less, get as much information as you can, but record your prospect research in your tools to save time (Salesforce and sales engagement softwares). Example techniques, pointing two tactics at each other in the same account, or referencing job postings but then later using relevant marketing content.

 

24:00 – Example of how to structure a Sales Development Representative team. Why we should think about inbound and outbound SDR reps. Why invest the time to go deeper and personalize up front to get prospect’s attention? Because the data says it works better than blanket, blast email sends and unprepared cold calls. More blanket approach gets unsubscribes than replies, and the replies want to be taken off the list.

 

27:00 – LeadIQ’s SDR and Marketing relationship is strong. LeadIQ has better, more engaged social media and LinkedIn presence than companies 10x their size, but it’s the power of LinkedIn to build brand as part of strategy. LinkedIn as a lead generation tool and place to talk about the industry. Converting LinkedIn engagement from likes, profile views to meetings is NOT done in a sales-y way. It’s not, “hey thanks for liking my post, now here’s my product.” It’s content that’s valuable and insightful for target buyers. It creates a natural, not-forced, organic transition. The LinkedIn content warms up the cold call to schedule the demo because the prospect has seen it.

 

33:00 – How video fits in the sales development rep process (for example, Wistia or Vidyard), using our advertising brain we can use “video views” the same way by seeing percentage of the video viewed.

 

43:00 – Data validates and shapes our tactics for creating prospecting video and written content. Including, having fun on video to send to prospects. It CAN work for any industry, because we are all humans. We just have to humanize the process with the tools we have available. LeadIQ has a culture of experimentation, then looking at the data. And, this culture starts at the top. LeadIQ’s VP of Marketing, Ryan O’Hara is equally active on LinkedIn and bought into the strategy.

 

51:00 – How Jeremy suggests getting onto LinkedIn, both for personal branding and helping your company. Crawl, walk, run social selling framework. Crawl: month 1 and 2, observe what is happening on LinkedIn in terms of the right content in your feed. Do this by connecting and following co-workers, partners, customers of your company, and industry thought leaders. If you sell to Chief Information Security officers (CIOs) follow them! Don’t just connect, but connect and watch. When to connect? Wait until there is some type of two-way engagement. In the meantime, just follow them, which is different and less intrusive than connecting. Do you like a post? Actually click the “like” button!

 

55:00 – Walk: month 3 and 4, re-post and share other industry content on LinkedIn. In the sales space, post Sales Hacker articles or HubSpot blog posts. If you sell to IT people, focus on CXO Talk or similar publications. Watch what your marketing team is doing for sharing content, and then put your own spin on it. Is your prospect and author of his or her own article? Share their post and TAG them. Your effort to build a coalition with your prospect will get rewarded sometimes.

 

58:00 – Run: months 5 and 6, start posting your own original content because you’ve been watching. You see what’s been working. Now you’re ready to formulate your own insights and opinions. When you share, be sure to say “I found this valuable for me because…” in any share or comment.

 

01:04:00 – Closing remarks, as you’re prospecting in Sales Development Rep role, or in marketing and advertising, don’t abuse the cell phone calls or the power of advertising – send something worth the prospect’s time. A good rule of thumb: the meeting, email, InMail message, or and other interaction should provide so much insight that will help their jobs that the prospect might even pay for that information.

 

Find Jeremy online: