The LeadG2 Podcast
The LeadG2 Podcast is dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week host Dani Buckley (VP/GM at LeadG2) discusses proven sales enablement strategies and real-life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries.
The LeadG2 Podcast
Cracking the Code of B2B Thought Leadership with Bill Sherman
In this episode, we're breaking down the many ways in which thought leadership can play an important role in maximizing your B2B sales efforts.
Here we tackle questions like: What exactly is thought leadership and why does it matter in B2B sales? Who is it for? How can sellers be incorporating thought leadership into their own strategy, as well as into different parts of the sales process? How do you go about measuring the ROI of thought leadership?
Joining Dani to answer those questions and more, is Bill Sherman, COO and Thought Leadership Practice Lead at Thought Leadership Leverage.
Bill makes some great points, such as:
- How true thought leadership begins with a provocative idea that starts a conversation
- What initial steps you can take to get started right away
- And, finally, how your own thought leadership can be one of the few sustainable advantages that you can have as a seller
Links:
Bill Sherman
Leveraging Thought Leadership Podcast
Dani Buckley
LeadG2
Welcome to Sell Smarter, sell Faster, a podcast dedicated to helping sales organizations grow. Each week, we discuss proven sales enablement strategies and real life examples with experts and thought leaders from across industries. I'm your host, Dani Buckley, Vice President and General Manager at LeadG 2, a sales performance agency. In this episode, we're breaking down the many ways in which thought leadership can play an important role in maximizing your B2B sales efforts. Here we tackle questions like what exactly is thought leadership and why does it matter in B2B sales? Who is it for? How can sellers be incorporating thought leadership into their own strategy, as well as into different parts of the sales process? How do you go about measuring the ROI of thought leadership?
Dani Buckley:Joining me to answer those questions and more, is Bill Sherman, COO and Thought Leadership Practice Lead at Thought Leadership Leverage. Bill makes some great points, such as how true thought leadership begins with a provocative idea that starts a conversation, what are some of the initial steps you can take to get started right away And, finally, how your own thought leadership can be one of the few sustainable advantages that you can have as a seller. Great, i am so excited to get started. Bill, thanks for joining. How are you doing today?
Bill Sherman:I'm doing well. Great to be here, Dani.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, we have a lot to talk about. So let's jump in and just to kind of get us everyone acquainted with you. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and just kind of what really drives your expertise and passion for thought leadership, which is what we're talking about today?
Bill Sherman:Yeah. So I stumbled into the world of thought leadership some 20 plus years ago and have worked with individuals and organizations that are trying to use thought leadership to influence how people think, how they act, how they create impact, And often, for an organization, that's how you sell, how you inform buyers what it is. That is in the range of possibility, not just today, but in the future, in terms of mitigating risk, finding new opportunities or taking advantage and making more productive.
Dani Buckley:Great, I love it. So I think you know, I feel like at this point it's fair to say that most folks probably most of our listeners know by now that thought leadership is important. They've heard about it, They're maybe doing it, They understand it to some extent. But I do think I often hear folks that are saying maybe it's not quite right for them, or this isn't totally a fit for their business, or they don't really see why. So can you share a little bit just more about the why thought leadership matters and who it's right for?
Bill Sherman:Yes. So let me frame this. So if thought leadership is taking ideas to scale, to produce impact, right, then it's hard to say it's not right for anyone who has an idea, whether that's an individual or an organization. What we've seen over the last, say, four years, maybe five, is that the organizations that are using thought leadership, especially in the sales process, has evolved. It used to be that it was professional services primarily that would focus on thought leadership. because you're selling consulting services, you're selling basically smart people, right, and how do you demonstrate that they're smart Thought leadership? but more and more organizations are recognizing we need to showcase the really smart people that we have and the points of view that we have within the organization and get that out to our buyers.
Bill Sherman:And so you've seen over the last four, five years Fortune 500 setting up actually a formal function for thought leadership, not that they have to be the smartest people in the room, but making sure that those ideas get out through sales channels, through marketing. I've seen mid cap organizations saying this is going to be our differentiator for how we go to market, because we can't be as big as the big organizations, but we can show we think more actually. Then I've seen startups as well, where startups say, hey, we've got either VC funds and we're trying to grow and accelerate and we want our voices heard, or some of those startups that have an eye on an IPO. they're saying we want to make sure we get the best valuation when we go public. The best way to do that is make sure that we're known for being forward-thinking, smart.
Dani Buckley:I'm thinking now. I actually want to even take a step back and make sure that folks really know what we're talking about. I love that you keep using the word ideas. I think some folks think thought leadership is. I share articles on social media, which is nice to do and invaluable, but I think there's a line of what actually makes someone a thought leader. It is more about being proactive in sharing your ideas, your opinions, things like that. It sounds like you agree. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you would further define it, but also if you could give a couple examples of what a business leader or a salesperson, what actions would they take? that is thought leadership.
Bill Sherman:Sure, let's distinguish between content marketing and thought leadership. That's probably the easiest place. Content marketing typically leads immediately towards a product conversation. You may be informing, but it's really tied to product marketing or solutions-based marketing. Thought leadership is getting your target audience. One, aware of who you are, if you want to build your brand and visibility. Two, getting them to raise their eyes from the next step in front of their feet and to think about six, 12, 18 months, maybe three to five years, depending on your field and your organization what's possible. What do I need to prepare for?
Bill Sherman:An idea at its core isn't a business book. It isn't a white paper, it isn't even an article. An idea is really simple. An idea at its core is a sentence, maybe two, that is a little bit provocative. It gets someone to stop, either through their scroll feed on LinkedIn or in a conversation. Go, i haven't heard that before. I'm not even sure I agree with you. But you know what? Tell me more. I want to understand a little bit more. And thought leadership begins with that provocative idea that opens conversation And then you can start making the case. You can provide stories, data, examples, case studies, references, all of those things that start to prove your point of view.
Bill Sherman:But it begins with that little nudge. Have you thought about it this way?
Dani Buckley:Love it, love it, what a great way to define it. And it's risky, right? It's scary. That's why it's not everybody is a thought leader, because it's people are scared to sometimes make a statement And maybe you might change your mind, maybe it might open up a discussion, and I think that's part of it, too, is being open minded to the conversation that can happen around these statements or opinions.
Bill Sherman:And to your point. You can do a couple of different things. You can advance an existing conversation. So, if people are talking about a subject in your field, what's your point of view? What is something that's not being talked about but is related? That's one way to do it. Or you can open a topic that needs to be talked about but isn't on people's radar in your field.
Bill Sherman:Okay, and those are two different ways of becoming active in thought leadership. The easier one is joining an existing conversation and pitching a penny or two. The harder one is when you say no, i disagree. Here's something that we need to be talking about, that's not being talked about, and I'm going to either write a post on LinkedIn, do a short form video, write a white paper, and they range from small, small, short form ways of creating thought leadership all the way to and I've written a book, but I think of the book or the white paper sort of as the capstone rather than your first attempt into a conversation, right?
Dani Buckley:Yeah, great, i love it. Okay, so let's shift a little bit to focus on actual B2B sales and sales Absolutely So how do you think sellers should be incorporating thought leadership into their own strategy and different parts of the sales process?
Bill Sherman:So let's acknowledge something that's happened within the sales ecosystem, not only in B2C but B2B, is that your buyer used to be less informed than you on the topic And now that has flipped. You don't know when they're in a buy cycle, You don't know what their buying criteria are, And they may have done more due diligence and research before they even reach out to you.
Bill Sherman:So there's an asymmetry of knowledge, typically in B2B now when they're coming reaching out often they're reaching out with very specific questions and they're close to the end of the buy cycle rather than the beginning of the journey. So if you're not joining the conversation where they are early, you're not on their radar. They're not going to reach out to you. You're essentially invisible, right. So part of it is being proactive in conversation and being able to be visible to your target audiences.
Bill Sherman:The second thing is, if you've got an existing client base and you're managing current accounts, for example, you want to be able to have something interesting to share to get your buyers thinking about the future, not only what you're selling today and what's your target, but you want to be planting seeds for the future. And I think of it this way You can be Bart Simpson in the back of the car going are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are you going to buy, or are you going to buy, or you can give them something interesting to think about. The latter. They'll take your call again and again.
Dani Buckley:I love that you're saying that. The way the language I use a lot is stop just checking in. Have a reason. Exactly what you're saying Provide value at every touch point. Don't just be you're going to buy, yet Just check it in, just circling back.
Bill Sherman:And if you're a seller and your organization has super smart people, maybe in ops or product or research, what can you pull from that group? What can you share of what's coming to help your buyers be more prepared and make you a trusted advisor so that when they have a question they pick up the phone and call you or they send you an email and say, hey, what do you think Those are the easiest sales Totally Love it.
Dani Buckley:Okay, so we're going to. This is super helpful, i think, to people listening and hearing more of these specifics, and I know the question that comes up all the time with any tactic or strategy we talk about is ROI. And so how do we measuring ROI is tricky in all kinds of tactics that we use, but it's particularly tricky with thought leadership, and so I'm curious how you go about measuring it and what you might recommend, like how can we know it's making an impact?
Bill Sherman:So the way that I recommend most organizations you probably have thought leadership going on in your organization already. Somebody is doing thought leadership on social, or speaking at events or writing a paper. That happens, right. What happens is it's sort of ad hoc and impromptu and there's no tracking for it, and so if you're not tracking what's being done, it's really hard to attribute anything from either pre-sales or sales evangelism or even attribution towards the sale, right. So I recommend starting with a crawl, walk, run approach. The first thing is start tracking it, even if it's just simply in an Excel spreadsheet. What's being done. Who are you talking to? Where did you engage? either on a one-to-one and a sales conversation, maybe with a senior level buyer, or maybe you spoke at a conference or you made a presentation Great, start tracking those things.
Bill Sherman:The next step, then, is tying it to actually moving through a sales pipeline. Right, and thought leadership often has a longer and indirect sales cycle because you're educating your buyers. But what you'll start hearing is hey, i've been following you or I've been listening to your podcast for a long while. Now's the right time for me to reach out, because we're ready to buy, and you get what I describe as the old radio approach of long-time listener, first-time caller. You will get those, you start tracking those and you're like, wow, these were people who were tuned in to us but we didn't even know they were listening to us, right? And then, finally, the most sophisticated way is if you're using something to manage the sales cycle of moving through the pipeline, you set up a formal process of what gets shared, when, and then you can start seeing did they open it, did they look at it, did they engage with it? And then you can start making some informed choices around attribution and percentage attribution and if a sales lead hasn't become a qualified opportunity, how do you nudge it?
Bill Sherman:Or if an opportunity gets stuck, how do you move it forward? sometimes through thought leadership.
Dani Buckley:Great. I love it. Those are such good examples. And a couple of things just to comment on. I think, at the end, what you're pointing to is using technology that we can and should. You don't necessarily have to right away, and that's not the only way, but there's a lot of value and there's a lot of software and different tools out there that can actually help with attribution. I think that's great. I also love the exact example of someone saying I've been listening to you. That's happened to me a couple of times. Where we've actually been, either I've been on or one of our salespeople has been on a sales call with a brand new prospect that we've never talked to. It's like oh yeah, I've listened to the Sell Smarter, Sell Faster podcast. Didn't even realize it was us. What a initial raving connection to have where they're like I've listened to this person, found value in this company and what they're providing, and now I'm talking to you.
Bill Sherman:That's the big ones that we love. What's even really cool on that is when they start quoting you back in the first call and you're like, wow, you have been tuned in. you're already thinking the way that I've been setting things up and framing. It takes less education from the buyer perspective, because your buyer is pre-qualified, they've identified their need and they're coming to you to help craft a solution.
Dani Buckley:Yeah, great, i love it. Hopefully some folks listening are starting to think I need to take some action. What can I do? What would be some initial first steps that you would recommend? Easy, just hit the ground, running kinds of things that folks can start to do.
Bill Sherman:I'll give a few starters, but I'm also going to underscore something that I think is absolutely essential. Number one you need to have discipline to this. You can't say, hey, i'll do thought leadership for a month or I'll make one post or two posts. This has got to be something you're willing to commit to for a period of time six months a year, on a consistent cadence. The second thing that I would say in terms of easy things it's okay to start small.
Bill Sherman:Start on LinkedIn, make a post once or twice a week, or even go simpler. Start commenting on people's posts and engaging with them to advance an existing conversation. You can then take those comments and turn them into posts yourself. Additionally, know what medium you're comfortable with. Some people are more comfortable with recording video than they are writing. If writing is not your jam, pull out your phone or record in Zoom or Teams or whatever a 60-90-second video, post it and engage comments. Now let's go to the intermediate. If you really want ROI from a sales perspective, you've got to have a strategy. Who are you trying to reach with this? What call to action is? and it isn't always a buy from me call to action. It may be a call to education or a call to further conversation rather than a straight out. And here's the call to action to buy.
Bill Sherman:You need a strategy you need to know what the call to action is and you need to be thoughtful about where, because it's not about just you being comfortable with creating the content and the modality. We're on a podcast now. We're doing video. We could be writing a piece, but it also depends on where's your audience. Are they comfortable watching? Do they prefer reading? You've got to meet them where they are, which sometimes means you move out of your comfort zone.
Bill Sherman:But the easiest way that I've found is give yourself a 30-day challenge. I've challenged people and say put a topic out for conversation each day. It doesn't have to be big, it doesn't have to be a new idea every day. It's okay to repeat. Most businesses really only need one to three big ideas at a time and they can run with them for three to five years. So as you start making it relevant to your target audience, how it fits their needs, their opportunities, their pain points, you find you have plenty to take and post.
Bill Sherman:The other thing I do is I keep a small set of Post-it Pads by my desk. If I have a turn of phrase that I use that I really like, or an insight when I'm explaining something or answering a question to a live customer. I will write it down. Guess what That becomes part of my posts on social media. I will also write down a question where we all have this, where you answer a question in real time but your answer is like a C plus If you think about it, and then an hour later you've got the A level answer. You're like man. I wish I said that. Instead, what I do is I'll write that A level answer on a Friday and say hey, i was thinking about this. Here's the reply I sent to you. And oh, by the way, i put it on social media as well, because if one buyer asks that question, more probably have two.
Dani Buckley:I love that. I'm so glad you mentioned the dislike Taking notes in real time for ideas, because I think that's where people get stuck a lot. They sit down like I'm going to be a thought leader right now. What do I want to post? I know I'm guilty of it too and I sit there staring at a blank screen or document.
Bill Sherman:What pages are deadly?
Dani Buckley:Yeah, just getting that habit of sometimes I even go back through old emails and I'm like, let me see what are some of the things I love, that So much good stuff in there. Bill, thank you. I think this is really helpful for folks that are starting to think about this, starting to wanting to make a difference here. So, just to close us out anything that we didn't cover, any closing thoughts or words of advice to our listeners that you want to part ways with.
Bill Sherman:Yeah, one of the things that I would say is thought leadership is one of the few sustainable advantages that you can have as a seller, as an organization. That reputation for being forward thinking and someone that they can trust to show them what the future will bring is invaluable. It serves you for not only filling the pipeline today, but for years to come.
Dani Buckley:Love it Great Well. Thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure chatting with you. Be sure those listening you can connect with Bill. In our show notes We've got contact information, bill. I'm sure you're happy for people to reach out and connect.
Bill Sherman:Absolutely, I do a podcast as well. So if you want to hear from other people at different stages on the journey practicing thought leadership, you can listen in and hear their stories as well.
Dani Buckley:Great, And we'll be sure we link to that in the show notes as well. So thank you everybody for joining us. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of Sell Smarter, Sell Faster, And until then, happy selling. Thanks for joining us on Sell Smarter, Sell Faster. If you like what you hear, click that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Be sure to visit our website, Sell Smarter, Sell Fastercom, where you can find even more helpful sales enablement and inbound marketing content.
