Everyone Isn't a Nail
1-minute read
If you’re selling a thing—a job, a product, a service—there are few faster ways to piss off your potential buyer than to behave like you have the biggest hammer in the world and they’re all a bunch of nails that need to be hit over the head with your offer.
The TL; DR: Channel matters—a lot.
Just because someone follows your LinkedIn company page doesn’t mean they’re in-market and want a DM from you trying to book a demo.
Just because someone got laid off from big tech doesn’t mean they want a message about your cool job offer. (BTW, save your new email copy about how shitty big tech has treated the poor tech workers. I cringe just thinking about the crap recruiters are blasting out right now.)
There are brand channels. There are marketing channels. There are sales channels.
But for some reason, sellers (yes, you recruiters and salespeople) treat every channel like they're a sales channel. They’re not.
Let’s focus on LinkedIn since probably where we met.
My two cents: Treat LinkedIn as a brand-marketing-first channel.
Use LinkedIn (in this order):
1. To organically and scalably distribute useful information to your target audience. It’s social media after all. People are here.
2. To build trust over time. (Keywords: Over time.) If you can afford it, patience pays off—big time. I also get that not everyone has the luxury of time. I empathize with these folks. It’s not your fault, I know ;)
3. To develop legit offline relationships with people in your industry. This is hugely useful for research and development purposes. Trust me, you’ll need this at some point.
Then, once you’ve given enough back to the platform, ask.
(Yes, this is the old Gary Vee jab, jab, jab, right hook approach. Set your personal feelings about the dude aside. This is an incredible philosophy and mindset to operate by in life and in business.)
I'd guess that most sellers will roll their eyes at this post, throw me the middle finger, take out their hammer, and start whacking at every nail they see.
I get it. Hitting quota saves your job. That said, if blasting people on LinkedIn is your sales strategy, you have a much bigger brand and marketing problem and no amount of pissing people off on LinkedIn will save your job.
Moral of the story: Channels matter. People don’t care about your thing until they have a reason to. Not everything is a nail.
Maybe put that on a sticky note and hang it somewhere at eye level? I did. It helps.
– Nate
Give this post a 👍 on LinkedIn. (I love attention.)