LinkedIn | Become a Trusted Sales Advisor with Nick Capozzi

 

The following transcript was created by an AI Bot which has yet to learn slang words and decipher Wendy's Texas accent. While it is no substitute for watching/listening to the episode, transcripts are handy for a quick scan. Enjoy!

 

Hey there and welcome to part four of our March LinkedIn Madness mini series. My guest today is a sales consultant that helps companies build a better sales pitch. And he himself has over 15 years of sales experience. And one of the things he dives into on this episode is how salespeople aren't fully leveraging LinkedIn and all the features it has to offer.

 

And what they are leveraging really isn't used in a very powerful way. He feels that salespeople have the opportunity to build themselves up as a trusted adviser and make human connections with prospects through the help of LinkedIn.

 

Let's do this. Welcome to Content Marketing, Engineered. Your source for building trust and generating demand with technical content. Here is your host, Wendy Covey. Hi and welcome to Content Marketing Engineered. On each episode, I'll break down an industry trend, challenge, or best practice in reaching technical audiences. You'll meet colleagues, friends and clients of mine who will stop by to share their stories, and I hope you leave each episode feeling inspired and ready to take action. Before we jump in, I'd like to give a brief shout out to my agency,

 

TREW Marketing. TREW is a full service agency located in beautiful Austin, Texas, serving highly technical companies. For more information, visit trewmarketing.com.

 

And now on with our podcast. Hey, everyone.

 

I'm here with Nick Capozzi, CEO of Sales Pitching. Welcome to the show, Nick. Hi, how are you?

 

I am doing great. It's a beautiful day in Austin, Texas. How are you? I'm fantastic.

 

It's a beautiful day in Phenix, Arizona. We've actually had cloud cover for like ten days in a row.

 

Oh, for ten days. I bet you've gotten depressed. Like, I'm not used to this. No.

 

In Arizona, that's a that's a good thing. We're excited to have it cool us off a little bit. Great.

 

Great. Well, I'm excited to talk to you because we need more sales, energy and sales advice on this show. And I know that's what you do best, so can't wait to get into your head a little bit here.

 

OK, so you have such a fun LinkedIn profile as I go. And I read about your background and a big thing that stuck out is you spent 20 years in the cruise industry of all things. I don't know anybody that's done that. So tell me a little bit about your experience of what it's taught you.

 

Yeah. So you know what the cruise business was for for a long time? It really defined what I did. I was a cruise ship guy because like you said, like who who really does that? And it was it was a fluke. One day I was I was in radio and someone said, hey, can you do that radio thing on a stage? Next thing I know, I'm stepping on a cruise ship in Miami and we were doing live presentations.

 

So we get all these duty free products and we had to pitch them and talk about them. And I spent 20 years I lived at sea for about a decade, worked my way up to an executive shoreside, was running duty free for like a cruise lines at the same time. And the key thing that I learned from that, it's kind of the ultimate B2C environment, right? Like business to the consumer environment. So one thing I had to do incredibly quickly, because there was so many options on the cruise ship was I had to build rapport with people.

 

I had to get them excited to want to talk to me and then get them to listen to what I was talking about. So as I've, you know, merged into B2B posts, cruise ship career, and I'm doing a lot more consulting with sales, I really see an opportunity for B2B companies to to be more relational and build more rapport with their clients. And the logic is, in my mind anyway, is that if I'm building a rapport with someone, if there's ten different products or services being offered and I can build an ally on their side, does that get me into the top two?

 

Top three. Top four, right. Just from from a little conversational, you know, rapport building opportunities?

 

Absolutely. I would think it does. So that's that's I think the biggest takeaway, you know, for me today based off of what I did in the cruise industry.

 

So tell me a little bit about what it is that you do. You listen to sales conversations, right?

 

I listen to a lot of sales conversations, a lot of it, you know, as as good a listener as you are a talker. Yeah, absolutely.

 

So so this is funny. So what we did was we were pitching like sixty products and sixty minutes and duty free liquor, tobacco, but Swiss watches, high end jewelry. And I would and I started doing this in 2000. People would FedEx me their VHS tape. This is how old it is, some of their presentation. And I would sit down and I would break it up. Right. Where did how was your tempo? Where did you pause?

 

Was your scripting did you take them along? Kind of the the path of the story. And, you know, as again, as I've converted to to be to be, that's what I do now. It's just instead of on a live stage in front of 500 people, people are presenting in this little zoom rectangle. And, you know, so I sit in. A lot of presentations and I break apart, you know, how they present and where there might be more opportunities to take advantage.

 

So when you listen to these conversations, you mentioned the script. So tell me. So there might be marketers listening that this whole thing is kind of foreign to them. So is it typical that companies have a script? And if so, who creates that script? What does this look like?

 

That's a great question, Wendy. And no one ever asked me that. And I love that you did.

 

So I am a big fan of scripting as a launch point. So, you know, the way I used to tell people, look, if I need you to learn your scripts, I need you to know what up, down, left, right. Like, you know, your national anthem. And the reason for that is, is that if you're talking from a place of knowledge and you're not thinking what's the next sentence that has come out of my mind?

 

You can do things, you can move, you can work on body language. You can, you know, eye contact. So I'm a big fan of scripting in general when it comes to scripting. And if you're in marketing or you're an entrepreneur, the biggest thing I always tell people, the easiest way to start putting scripts together because it's about 50 50 if companies have them or not. And honestly, if they have them, they can usually use a little tweaking.

 

But one thing I always say is just talk about what you know, for 30 minutes. So if you're if you're talking about, you know, you've got a lot of great fishing stuff behind you, you know, about fish. I don't know about fish. You can teach me so much about fishing. So I always say open up a word document and just click dictate and then spend 30 minutes talking about what you know. Right. So if you're marketing, you're talking about your product, talk about it for 30 minutes.

 

And if you talk for 30 minutes, usually at about eight pages of single spaced content, that's a lot of content.

 

That's a lot of content.

 

But then from there, you can you can look and start finding the paragraphs and the different points in a story that you can start to put together. But I'll summarize the question by saying the opportunity that's missed when it comes to scripting is you should be telling a story. So tell me about the relationship between having a script and telling a story and being a good listener when it comes to, you know, just being a helpful salesperson.

 

So that's another great question. OK, so, hey, I'm trying to learn to perfect my own sales pitch. This is a free consulting 30 minutes right here. I love it.

 

So here's here's the key with listening from from my point of view, I think when we were doing a demo, let's say we're in a 30 minute demo where we talk really fast. We're so afraid of missing things. Because you know what? That one time I told Wendy that product. I said this. I got to make sure I say that and I got to make sure I see this and we're just forcing so much out. This is why scripting is really important, because I don't need to give you 12 sentences to make one point.

 

I want to make that one point in one line. And if I really focus on my scripting and kind of where it sits in my presentation, in theory, to me the best presentations are a couple of minutes of rapport building, seven, eight minutes of actual talking and demo. This is in a 30 minute. And then if you've laid out your script incorrectly, you'll spend the next 18, 20 minutes having laid breadcrumbs out. So the prospects are going to ask you the right questions.

 

So that's one of the things you want to do. You want to make them the hero of the story and let them ask the questions. So I think it becomes it's definitely active listening because you absolutely want to make sure that you're finding their particular pain point. But again, if you've laid it out properly, you don't have to talk the whole time. You don't have to push your solution and try and shoehorn it. You know, you can say, hey, listen, here's what we do.

 

You know, here's what I've looked into about your company. Here's where I think we might be a fit. But let me ask you, Wendy, what questions do you have after, you know, going through that seven, eight minutes? So that's that's typically how I attack it.

 

I bet there's a lot of mapping between needs and solutions and helping, like you said, lead this person towards those solutions. So, yeah. A dynamic, active conversations. Yeah, absolutely.

 

And I think that's another point that I, you know, used to train a lot of my people on is that you don't want to have one pitch because if you just have one pitch, you really can only relay that to one person. You want to have the base, the foundation of your pitch. But then it's really 20 different versions based on on the prospects pinpoint. Right. And that's where you want to go. And that's where, you know, saying shoehorning.

 

Well, I have to say this because this is what I say. Right. As opposed to, OK, let me you know, let me definitely lay out some part of the presentation, but let me then find out what their needs are and then I'll guide the rest of the presentation that way.

 

Yeah, I know. With with true marketing, when I'm talking to you a prospect, there's some distinct personas that I'm talking with. And so, for instance, one is an executive who has an engineering background and knows nothing about marketing except their marketing is not good and they don't have a marketing person. So maybe a one person marketing person that knows they need help. And those are very different conversations, as you might imagine. So at the end of the day, they may need the same solution, but the path in which we get their looks completely different.

 

Yes, 100 percent. No, you're you're you're you're bang on there. Bang on there. Yeah. So tell me about the relationship between this script in these conversations and supporting content that leads somebody to this moment and then takes them forward after this moment.

 

Oh, wow, that's that's that's a whole other podcast. That's another great question. You know, I think the best way to look at it is that when I produce content and that's how I get my business, my you know, I came off the cruise industry, my industry went on lockdown. So I don't have people to refer me business because my area of expertize kind of got shut down. So, you know, when I create content, what I this is what's interesting from my point of view is I've learned this over the last three months when I talk about a particular subject, people then want solutions based on that subject.

 

Right. If I talk about something completely different, the same people are watching, but a different category of those people will now reach out to me about that second thing I'm talking about. So there's ways using content, you know, as a marketer that you can you know, I said 20 different presentations will in theory, you could have 20 different pieces of content that lead all those 20 different people through those conversations. So I think really understanding, you know, the in the discovery phase and this is another place and I am not an expert in this.

 

I mean, my expert on discovery is, again, really easy to see. But I've fallen a lot of people in B2B. And so if you create the content, you get them interested in one thing, then what are the questions that you're asking to find out if that's really their pain point that you think it is confirming that? Is there secondary issues that they also need to solve? Right. So really tracking them, and especially if you're not a big company that have worked at a lot of, you know, small companies, you really need to track that process.

 

You really need to have those notes and whatever, you know, personalized CRM you're using understanding what what did they come in the door for and make sure that's what I'm trying to put in their hand for them to leave with.

 

You know what I love about what you just described to is look at the wealth of information that the salesperson is picking up as they're digging into the pain point. So what was the perceived pain point? And then it might be different. You know, it may evolve as as you explore further, but that's so informative to marketing as you think about what messages to lead with, what types of content to create, to speak to those pain points and, you know, even be there.

 

Is there searching on those pain points?

 

Yep, 100 percent. Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit about so you have broadcast background and I know in looking again, you're if any anybody goes to your LinkedIn profile, they immediately see you talking. You have a lot of video content. So why video, you know, and when did you start that and what results have you seen?

 

OK, so why video? So I knew I had, you know, an advantage just because of broadcast background and using video. And I use a lot of video in the cruise business. But this was this was where, you know, it was an imposter syndrome. But there was a fear for me when I started putting videos out in October. And it was because I'm connected to CEOs of cruise lines. Right in my videos are a little bit tongue in cheek, a little bit funny, or at least I try, you know.

 

So there was a big hesitation in actually putting that out. And if you look if you actually go to my posts, it's only videos except for one document that was in there to explain something about videos. And what I've tried to do and this is all been kind of learning on the fly is one thing is that the look of my video is always the same, and you can always expect it to be a video. And then to the point where now I'm sort of marking like a big stamp on the top how long the video is going to be, what kind of commitment I'm asking for.

 

And, you know, it's interesting watching the dynamic of building this tribe of people who I can bring value to with these thoughts I have about, you know, whether it's sales or sales presentations or or negotiation, wherever it is. And that here's the interesting thing. I've only posted like I think sixteen videos since October. I was doing twice a week and now I have it down to once a week. And it is in weeks. In five, six weeks.

 

I had a lot of work coming in for Q1. This is starting from from a dead stop and at the end of three months and now I'm turning work away. Right. But it's it's because I can right now, the bigger problem is how am I going to scale what I'm doing right so that I'm not turning people away. But it was really interesting to see, you know what? I thought my perceived value was right. And now by putting content out there, people are looking at it in a different way because I'm not trying to sell them.

 

They're sitting on the couch. They're committed to ten minutes of scrolling through LinkedIn. Can I hooked them? Can I get them interested in what I'm talking about and my bringing value? And we hear that a lot to me that it was like a big thing in twenty, twenty years. How how you providing value. But I've seen it work for me when I offer value, people like wow, that's really good. Which led to the next thing of how do I get better at qualifying people because I'm.

 

Also, ship guy, right? I'm like, oh, you want to talk, let's talk, but I'll talk to anybody all the time. Come on.

 

So I've had to streamline that. But one thing I. I have always been a Gary Vaynerchuk disciple. And one thing he keeps saying, even to this day, there's not enough content on LinkedIn and there's not enough video content on LinkedIn. And instead of trying to be on LinkedIn and Instagram and Facebook, I focus solely on LinkedIn. And the reason is, let me try and master this platform. And also that's that's where my my people are, right?

 

I mean, do they do they have an Instagram account? Sure, I'm sure they do. But that's not where they're thinking about business and thinking about business on LinkedIn. Right. So that's where I've committed to to being.

 

Yeah. And when it comes to so we study how engineers can consume information to make purchase decisions to do this research study every year. And LinkedIn always comes in as the top social channel after industry networking group. So think like associations that have their own sort of online social communities. So same with us. In fact, I have a LinkedIn podcast series coming up. So we're kind of preceding this a little bit. I may have to put this episode in with it.

 

That was perfect that you brought it up and LinkedIn would. They've made a lot of changes to their platform in recent in the past six months and it looks like they'll continue to do so. What are some changes that you've noticed in ways in which you've changed to fully take advantage of LinkedIn?

 

So they're looking for engagement. That is everything I've done and everyone I follow and all this information I'm trying to create for myself of the best, the best the best technique is that they want engagement. So a big part of what I do is I budget two hours a day to what I call business development. That's partially creating content, but then engaging on the content. Right. And engaging with other people's content. And the two side effects are one, LinkedIn sees that.

 

So my content is going to have a much larger range. But the other is that. The people is this is interesting. I did I did it. Sorry, I'm going to sidetrack a little bit. I told people in the video I did last week, if you're going to do the strategy, you need 50 new friends, 50 people outside of your network. Right. That you want to be engaging with, but in complementary businesses. OK, so what I said was, you know, to actually go out and build this is by engaging on people's content.

 

And if you if you really want a meeting with someone, go comment on their posts for 10 days in a row and then send an invite, see if they say yes, that would get someone's attention.

 

It really does. But this is where I took it a step further. And this was in my mind, I'm like, why is not everyone doing this? I admit these people were in complementary spaces. And I'd say, hey, Wendy, let's get on a call. Why do you want to do that, Nick? Well, we're commenting on each other's posts every day. So two things. One, if I understand what you do exactly, Wendy, I can better refer people to you because that's if I'm networking by engaging in other people's content.

 

But the other thing is. If I have a conversation with you and really understand your business, something I'm not going to glean from just watching your post, I can comment better on what you're talking about. Right. So then what happens is if I have someone who's got really great content and has a lot of followers and I understand their business, and then I can give really good insight when they have a post that's trending up, if I can become the most relevant comment.

 

Well, now, if they have, you know, three thousand people looking at that post, 3000 people, maybe not, maybe just 300 will look at the most relevant content or common. Excuse me. So it's 300 people who maybe didn't know before.

 

And now we're like a big reach all of a sudden and very relevant, right? Mm hmm. And what I like about that is you're coming from a place of authenticity, right? It's this is complimentary to my business. I understand. And I'm actually interested in what this person is doing. And so I really appreciate that approach.

 

Well, you know, for me, it's how I am naturally. And then people ask me, well, what if I'm in sales and I'm an introvert? And that's a really interesting question, because you can be a very technical seller, every time I bought a television, I've gone to Best Buy and I want to talk to the person who knows most about TVs. Right. They might not be the most persuasive or exciting, but because they're so technical.

 

But if you are technical, you I really feel that if you you can start to think about how can I be more relational just a little bit. And I don't the people have to be who they are. You've got to sell the way you are. But I think some people, especially if they're selling a lot of technical stuff, they're like, well, I just sell technical. This is it. You can take it or leave it.

 

But there's stories to it. Absolutely. Which I'm sure will get into. Well, maybe we should get into it right now. I feel like that was a teaser. So let's let's talk about you stories. We wait. If someone's technical and they know their product really well, why do they need a story? Well, well, OK.

 

So and this is, you know, for your audience specifically, I think it's an opportunity missed. So if I'm selling you a Swiss watch, I'm selling you an emotional purchase. You don't need a five thousand Swiss watch.

 

Right. But you want to have much of a need. No, not much of a deal.

 

But if I'm selling something technical. So years ago, I, I did some consulting for a huge window and door manufacturer in Canada. And it's windows. Right. What do you think about when you think of windows?

 

Well, I went in to, you know, protect me from the elements and bring in some light in. Yeah, you're right.

 

And those are those are technical things. Right? Especially in Canada. I want to keep the cold. All right. I want to make sure that it's a good quality window. Texas, we're going to keep the heat out. Right.

 

So the way that I look at that, is that OK, well, if we're talking about Windows, people don't really care about the specs of a window, right? I mean, they do, but it's not something they're going to really dig into and go through. The what they're thinking about is how is the light going to come in? I was upgrading my windows, going to change the dynamic of how me and my family play in the family room.

 

Right. Because now I have a better quality light coming in. Right. Because when I didn't have good quality windows, it was hot in there all the time. I had the drapes closed. But now this keeps the elements out, keeps the heat on in Texas. Now I can have all this beautiful sunlight coming in. Right. So that's I mean, that's just off the top of my head. But it's that same kind of idea is what's the benefit.

 

Right.

 

And you have you know, you have table stakes. Right. Every window should do certain functions. But but I see what you're saying, having this story about this more of an emotional connection to why this window and what it does to your life personally.

 

And, you know, I'll tell you, I really believe that every every sale is a B2C sale on some level, even if it's very technical, even if you're taking a technical product and selling it to a technical person, they still have an issue that your product can solve. Right. So we say pain point, but pain is emotional, right? Whether it's physical or mental anguish, it's called a pain point because you are there is something that needs to be remedied.

 

Right. So by telling it as a story and listen, it depends where you're talking to. If I'm talking to someone who is super technical, I'm probably going to keep it way more technical. But I also want to poke a little bit and see if I open up this door. Right. And an easy way to do it. This is, you know, one of my favorite things to do. And I do it before I talk to everybody is go through people's LinkedIn profiles and find Easter eggs.

 

Right. Where they from? What did they study? Where do they go to school? Is what they studied in school relevant to what they're doing today? Right. So people have strange accreditations.

 

You know, one of the biggest over with the biggest sales they ever closed was a guy had in there that he was a certified youth hockey coach.

 

Oh, I open that up. I'm like, oh, hockey coach. Did you play? I did. And that conversation, we didn't do any discovery that first we talked about hockey for almost all time. It's like, okay, let's get right to the second meeting. I'm like, OK, great.

 

So I think sometimes when you when you find some first of all, even if someone is very technical, the point that you put the time into looking and then asking those questions I find is interesting, but then also ask it as a question. So one of the things that's been really big the last couple of years is like these major universities offer like an eight week online course and people will put that on their LinkedIn profile. Hey, I see you took that contract negotiation course at such and such a school.

 

What was the best takeaway like? What was that what was the key thing you learned? Right. Yeah, I'm not just noting that. Hey, I saw that you took it. Not making you the hero by asking you teach me something. Teach me something you learned because you went to the trouble to do that neat.

 

And then you you probably get something out of that conversation, too, just aside from building a relationship and a rapport. But, hey, that's pretty interesting. I'd want to know.

 

But but you know what's interesting about it, when you do that, it catches people off guard. Right. And here's actually this one's even easier and this happens a lot. If you if you're doing, you know, twenty calls a week, you're going to have two or three of these week go through the mutual connections because we assume it's industry people. Right. I cannot tell you how many times. Hey, do you actually know so-and-so? Yeah, I worked with them at at, at X.

 

I'm like, that's my brother in law.

 

You're kidding. Oh wow. Yeah. Right. Go. I've had I've had relatives. I've had friends. I've had you know, and sometimes it's a. Hey, just curious, I know we have a lot of connections on the thing, but do you actually know? So, yeah, I worked with you. I did. And then you have the awkward now. They just linked in with me and I don't really know.

 

And that's cool. And then we get into the agenda. But what did I do? I just I pushed on the door just a little bit to see if I could open up more than a crack. And if they didn't want to open the door, no problem. We'll keep the door closed and we'll get to the agenda. But, you know, if you find that kind of commonality, like who do you actually know together? What just happened?

 

I just got vetted. Right? I just got vetted by my brother in law that they did.

 

Right.

 

But it seems to do it in conversation. Change the whole conversation for sure.

 

Well, and thinking from a sales person's point of view, what are a couple of key pieces of content or other ways marketing can help set the salesperson up for success when they go to do these first initial outreach and, you know, connections.

 

So and that's a great question. And I think often we have such a disconnect between marketing and sales for a lot of reasons. But when I when I in the cruise industry was in a marketing role, I would ask my salespeople what what tools do you need? What how can I support you? And, you know, because I would catch myself, I'm like, oh, I think as a marketer, I have a clever idea right now. This is what we're going to build it around.

 

But is that actually valuable to the salesperson? Right.

 

Yeah, I think that communication and having these frank conversations and interviewing your salespeople like you're the salesperson and they're the prospect, right? Like don't just say, hey, shoot me an idea. Say, Hey, Wendy, can we sit down for 30 minutes? Can we just budget after two minutes? I just let me interview you. Let me ask you questions. What do people ask you? You know, where where do you get stuck in a conversation?

 

You know, do people compliment on on the deck where they say, oh, can you go back on that? You know, so just having those conversations that that communication, I think is is really key and that just goes to internal relational relationship does I think that's wonderful advice.

 

And there isn't some one size fits all formula when it comes to sales enablement content. And I think there couldn't be a more important thing than to build that relationship and listen and be in their shoes and understand how you can fit in so good.

 

But you're in marketing, Wendy. How often does that happen?

 

Well, you know, I'm in marketing. So my you know, my background is in marketing, but I've been the lead salesperson for true marketing for 13 years. So there. Yeah. So I see both sides and and it's been it's been an eye opening experience when you know, the marketers for true create the marketing plan and they come to me with ideas and I'll say, but why? You know, why are we pushing that and why focus on that this quarter?

 

That isn't is that really a service that we want more business for? But yet that's your content push. So I ask a lot of tough questions and I can feel people getting a little uncomfortable and it's good tension. But it also, I think was a reminder to the group sometimes of, oh, we probably should have had that meeting first before I rolled out the plan, you know, so I try to I try to be very represented as it is.

 

And it can it can be good. But I think that tension is important and the jobs are very different. But we're all trying to achieve the same goals so that spirit of camaraderie is important and of communication.

 

And you know what? I think for me, it was just nailed in to me in the cruise business because, you know, I worked on three different thirty six different ships as as a contract employee. So I'd have to drop in as a department of one person when there's twelve hundred people there. So the restaurant department's got 200 people. I'm the one who has to fit in. Right. I'm the one who has to bring value to my team.

 

Members of the hotel director that to the food and beverage manager. How do I do that. Right. How do I become part of the hotel. You know, and I just see that as an opportunity that's that's missing a lot of companies. There's a big disconnect there.

 

Yeah, well, tell me a little bit. You have a podcast also. It's the sales pitching podcast.

 

Sales pitching podcast. Absolutely. You can totally find me there. We talked to entrepreneurs. They're about, you know, they're they're their battle, you know, when they when they, you know, lace up their boots and went to to to go and blazed a trail. And then but primarily I'm on LinkedIn and LinkedIn is where I spent a lot of my time. And, you know, I really think if people are not taking advantage, especially with content on LinkedIn right now, especially with video content, there's there's easy ways to move move heavy mountains really quickly if.

 

Just focus great. Well, everyone look for Nick on LinkedIn, look for the sales pitching podcast and start to create video content on LinkedIn. Sounds like those are important words. Any other parting advice? Wow, man, just do it, just step and the ledge will appear. All right, great. Thank you so much, Nick.

 

Thanks for joining me today on Content Marketing, Engineered. For show notes, including links to resources, visit trewmarketing.com/podcast.

 

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