The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Tim Hughes, CEO of DLA Ignite & Book Author

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

Tim Hughes, CEO of DLA Ignite & Book Author https://dlaignite.com/

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that are sending us a ton of authors. We've got some more people from the MSNBC network coming up. So watch for some great talent as well. We have all the best guests, and today we have one of the best, Mr. Tim Hughes. I've known him for quite some time through social media. He's universally recognized as the world's leading pioneer in exponents of social selling and is currently ranked number one by Analytica as the most influential social selling person in the world. He is also the co-founder and CEO of DLA Ignite and co-author of the best-selling books, Social Selling, Techniques

to Influence Buyers and Changemakers, and Smarketing, How to Achieve Competitive Advantage Through Blended Sales and Marketing. How's it going, Tim? Welcome to the show. Hi, Chris. I'm really excited to be here. Awesome sauce. I've been here for ages. show hi chris i'm really excited to be here yeah it's awesome sauce 24 inches yeah we've we've we've

kind of been these ships that are always crossing uh each other in uh in uh in social media the waters but we never have sat down and had a pint together huh yeah absolutely yeah so we're now having a virtual now we are in a virtual yeah in the in the safe covet environment yeah uh hey give us your plug so people can find you on the interwebs and look you up and get to know you better. Yeah, so I'm Timothy underscore Hughes on Twitter. That's T-I-M-O-T-H-Y-H-U-G-H-E-S. You should be able to find me on LinkedIn,

which is Timothy or Tim Hughes. And our email, sorry, our website is DLA ignite.com. And the book social selling techniques to influence buyers and change makers is available on Amazon worldwide. It's a book, a Kindle. It's a MP3, whatever you want,

you can get it, whatever you want. You can get it. It's the beauty of amazon right yeah it's also the view of covet 19 right now uh and but i'm sure you're about your book's a much better read than than covet 19 you're coming to us from across what we like to call the pond aren't you yeah i'm based in london yeah there will be a global organization we have um uh people um associates and partners throughout the world but yeah i'm based in london yeah there will be a global organization we have um uh people um associates and partners throughout the world but yeah i'm based in london

you know it's a really interesting thing a lot of people in america right now have no idea that they can't escape the island if they needed to like like no one wants us we're the scourge of the world. What's that like on the other side of the pond there? Looking at us. What's it like? It's interesting. Can I give you the political correct answer that it's interesting? Whatever. Sure, whatever you want to do.

Is a certain perfect storm taking place that seems to be happening? We're the slow-moving car wreck. I don't know but it's interesting like uh so a friend was saying to me he goes what are you going to do if donald trump gets re-elected again i'm like well i can't move to canada we're we're in our own little uh you know he wanted to build a wall and now we're you know we're all cut off from everything. Now everybody else is building a wall. Yeah, everybody else is like, we're the scourge of the world at this point. There's places that are probably not the greatest places to live in

that maybe don't have running water and food. And they're like, no, we really don't want you guys here. Like, seriously. Anyway, moving on, Timothyothy but it's good i'm glad you're staying healthy over there on the other side of the pond yeah we've been in lockdown for three months now so i actually went to a restaurant at the weekend yeah with a social we had a socially distanced um um bacon roll there you go uh i guess the queen's not out partying yet is that no she's um she's at windsor castle she's um she's she's 90 something so yeah well god saved the queen absolutely there we go so uh let's talk about you uh give us uh before getting your books

and stuff let's let's get in uh kind of us, before you get into your books and stuff, let's get into kind of a story on how you grew up and what got you here, what helped shape this man that became this master marketing genius. So I'm a salesperson, and I've worked in tech for, I'll say, 20 years selling. And then back in 2015, I was actually part of a sales reorganization. So this is a classic situation where we were an on-premise organization and the competition moved to cloud, SaaS. And we had to completely re-engineer the sales team and one of the things that we taught the sales people was to to sell on social it was fairly rudimentary um and you

know the power of networks that um once you start doing something on a network things just seem to come to you yeah um so um um and that's what happened i started um doing things in a way sometimes people i say to people i wrote my linkedin profile a bit like if you were tony robbins or if tony robbins was telling you to look you know you know how tony robbins tells you to do visualizations what it was kind of like i decided to write my linkedin profile how i wanted to be in three years' time. So I didn't want to carry on selling SaaS systems. I actually wanted to get into social media.

And Matt Reynolds, who's my co-author on social selling, did I mention Matt? Basically, he came to me and we had a chat and I said, we need to write a book. And he said, well, I know some people at a publisher. Within three months, I got a book deal. I mean, it was just amazing. The book went bestseller during the first three months before it was actually available. Part of that was network, but part of that was interesting,

and it's just sold then on and on and on and on. And, you know, even this this week people have been posting pictures because i actually say in the book if you're reading it post the pictures yourself on social oh serious even today are basically posting pictures of themselves saying i've just read this book and it's an amazing thing so i'm able to connect to all of my um all the readers or the ones that post the pictures. And it's just been amazing. So I left that large US software company about four years ago and set up DLA Ignite. And what we do is we help transform organizations using social media. Awesome.

And it's amazing the way that we've got people to move away from using cold calling um emails and and all of those um old-fashioned things and actually use something modern and it's accelerated during covid19 um it's just amazing that um um the way that life has changed now everybody was suddenly sitting at home, and we were on social. I should look you up and see when I followed you on LinkedIn. I just barely, right before the show, downloaded all my connections, maxed out at 30,000, and it's become obvious to me that it's time. We've been doing this thing on all my Twitter accounts.

We've been cleaning all the dead wood. So we've been going through eight of my major Twitter accounts and cleaning out anybody who's, number one, not following me back. And also just anything that looks just dead. Like it's amazing how much dead wood is over there. You know, stuff that hasn't tweeted in like five million years and stuff like it's i don't know why twitter leaves the stuff on there sometimes and uh so now i'm starting that process on linkedin and you can download all your connections into a spreadsheet and it

literally shows me all the way back to the very first person I connected with on LinkedIn. Is that crazy or what? It's amazing, yeah. I mean, we've been on LinkedIn for years. I mean, the thing is that we think that social media has changed the world. It's changed society. You know, was it just two weeks ago, we were all talking about the fact that Adidas had retweeted Nike and certainly the news programs in the UK are about who's tweeted this and who's tweeted that,

usually because they're of a very senior position within the US. And it's also changed business. I mean, we've met through social. And I think the buying, as far as we're concerned, the buying process has changed. You know, social is, if you're looking to buy something, you'll go online and check it out. I mean, you're a classic example of, you know, we'll look at,

you know, if I say to you, you'll hate me for this because I've got an iPhone. So if I say to you, an iPhone is the best phone in the world, you'll say, no, it's not right yeah well but the thing is is that and and any anybody else if you know if i if i run an advert that says the iphone is the best in the world the first thing you'll do is go online and google it the next thing you'll do is you'll go on to social and you'll start reading articles the next thing you do is you go to influences like you and say, so what do you think of the iPhone?

And you'll say shit. And, and, and so, so what happens is that, um, so if I tell you that the, the iPhone is the best phone in the world,

within two days, you'll come back and say, these phones are actually better and they're cheaper. And it's the same for any product. You know, if I tell you that the BMW 4 Series is the best car in the world, you'll go on the line, you'll check it out, you'll go onto social, you'll ask your friends, you'll talk to people like Chris Voss, and you'll come back and say, well, actually, I think these cars are better.

And that's the fundamental issue that's changed with with um selling and marketing is that it doesn't matter how much i as an organization will come and interrupt you with an advert with cold calling on email if i interrupt you and i broadcast my message all you're going to do is go well that's interesting and i'm going to go online online and check that out it's also good i was going to say so you know i got a facebook ad the other day so i'm a big collector of um physical music i collect vinyl records and um and i got sent a facebook message um facebook ad saying here's a um it's a i'm a i'm a big rock fan so there's an acdc box set of live acdc concerts right so i thought oh i quite fancy that so

facebook ad i go okay i wonder if i can get it cheaper so i immediately go online and i can find it cheaper on amazon wow so so i just because us record collectors all stick together i just put a comment onto the ad saying you do realize you can get it cheaper on Amazon. So here we got people that are basically spending money on Facebook ads just for me to go and buy from a competitor. And that is the way, that's the conundrum that we live in right now. The fact that the buyer has this power and we are able to go online and buy stuff. And the more that we use advertising, cold calling, email, the more that we're driving people to our competitors. The great democratization of data and information.

Absolutely, yeah. And we can talk to anybody, same as you. You've come to me and we're having this chat, and we can talk to anybody who we want. There is a situation, we've never had this in the world before where we have the president of the united states talking to everybody not through the news media yeah yeah so he's completely bypassed the news media to talk to people now you can actually talk to him back so i never have we been in the situation where we have been able to do that

because normally you'd need to go through your, what was it? You'd need to go probably through the party. Yeah, you'd send an email. You've never been to do that. The same with, I was just looking on Twitter today and there's one of our um politicians have made an announcement and everyone's going on there saying well that's not new or the thing is is it that is this democratization that we've been able to the hierarchies have gone and we can talk to whoever

we want and that's a massive change in the way that society works, both from the way that we're able to work in society and business. Yep. I think it's been an interesting ride seeing it come up and then seeing some of the other elements of the dark side. You and I both came up at the same time where we were all like, kumbaya, and social media is going to change the world, and we saw arab spring overthrowing evil governments and then evil governments going hmm so this could

overthrow us what can we use it for and then it became the opposite where um you know we've we've lost a lot of our privacy um uh you know giving up a lot of our values and rights. Evil governments have used it to be oppressive as opposed to, you know, the freedom of information and everything else. So it's interesting the journey that's gone on. And I'm kind of curious on what the future is going to be, if it's going to open up to a better place, you know, where we put in rules and regulations more to regulate maybe Facebook and Twitter and other things, but somehow in a way keep them to where the beautiful parts of social media are there without the dark parts being more regulated, you know.

Well, I mean, if you take China, china i mean wechat as a platform is way more advanced than facebook but you give up all your privacy yeah you know you you know they've got um you know in china we were doing some work in singapore um and we had a person who basically come back from china and they say she said i can't understand how you're all using credit cards because we all use our phones in China you know credit cards are completely gone um and and you know Uber is is just a copy of of WeChat functionality you know they've had been able to hire um taxes in WeChat for for years um but I was was being told that they've got some AI in WeChat, which will actually predict and say, okay, this Friday, you're going to meet at this place

with these friends. Do you want us to organize it for us? Now, they know that because they know that you're at that place every Friday, and they know that you're connected to those friends. Now that's, that obviously you to have, some people would say, Oh yeah, it'd be really great to have that organized for me. But you obviously have to give up an awful lot of your privacy to allow that

to happen. And, and in, in China now they have that social scoring thing where with the AI, they know everything about you, what you're buying, what you're selling. You get a social score, which depends on, depending upon what your score is, you can either travel or you can't. If you're, I guess, a subversive type of person in their minds,

they put you on lockdown and make it hard for you to travel and everything else. It's a, it's kind of interesting. And of course there's the things that they're doing with the Uyghurs where they're pretty much doing internment camps and slave labor and a bunch of other dirty, ugly stuff that's going on over there. And I don't want to be pro Chinese or anything,

but that, that, that I interviewed, I run a podcast and I interviewed someone who's written a book about China and they, you know, in terms of, you know,

they're, they're, you know, drones, you know, they're, they're the leaders in the world for drones. Obviously one of the reasons why they use drones is for surveillance.

Yeah. And I know that the Californian police bought them in the end after coughing a bit and not wanting to do that, but, but you know, that they've got, you know, certainly some of the innovation they've got there,

you know, they've got rather than you having to go out and get a Starbucks, they had the company that delivers them on an electric scooter until that company went bust. Cause they had dodgy accounting, but Starbucks was started copying that. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, but one of the things that's interesting is the development recently

of the people using social against people that are using social so the um that recent um trump um um he had that big big meeting where he said he had got a million people yeah and actually um he probably did have a million people but they were a number of them were fake yeah because people on tiktok were basically applying to do it and they were just doing it for love yeah the manipulation is kind of interesting in fact it's widely assumed that about 80 percent of his followers on twitter are fake and they're just bots and most likely bots from other countries although they try to smash those out a lot um but uh i think they just haven't taken away from him because, you know, I don't know. He get, he get angry over the years on Twitter.

I've lost followers. Uh, I remember in 2000, I think it was 2012 or 2011. They were really getting attacked by Russian hackers, creating bot fake accounts. And one day Twitter announced they were going after him. And I lost like 18,000 followers like overnight. They, you know,

they announced it. I was like, Holy crap. I didn't know I was that popular with the Russians. Well, I just, I lost 5,000, but you know,

it kind of didn't matter. But if, if people were going to lose, if, if Kim Kardashian was going to lose 2 million or something, let me pick someone that's not political. Um, then, then obviously they would have a, not political, then obviously they would be concerned about it. But you've got to remember that 55% of the – this is Twitter's figures.

55% of people on Twitter don't tweet. They use it as a way of getting information. Yeah. Even like most people are lurkers on Facebook. Like a lot of people, I had somebody, I was doing the happy birthday thing where I say happy birthday, everybody. You know, you go through the daily birthdays and I had somebody that I, I didn't recognize.

I haven't seen ever on my streams ever liking ever commenting. She's like, I like everyone in your posts. They're so awesome. And I'm like, man, you really are a deep dark lurker. I've had people that have come to me saying, you know, I read all your posts and I go, have you? But, and you've got to recognize that 80, 90% of people probably are lurkers. And there's nothing wrong with that.

In fact, you know, lurkers are great. And I don't mind people coming to me saying i read all your stuff i like it because um it's part of the the magic of networks yeah and it and it can be like witchcraft sometimes the the way that the the networks are are powerful and um can bring stuff to you yeah it's also interesting too, because sometimes I get discouraged cause I'm like, I don't think anybody really gives a damn what I think anymore. And when I bump into a lurker, I'm like,

well, would you tell me? Cause you, you know, I'm like a comedian or an actor where the juice for me is when making people laugh or getting attention. And so if I don't get attention,

I don't think it's working and then I get frustrated and then I don't do stupid shit to get attention. I did a, I did an interview with a, um, a, um, behavioral psychologist last week.

He also is a standup comic. Um, and he's doing-up at the moment on zoom oh wow and you can't see the audience because the people don't like put the videos on yeah so he said you get no feedback so he said what you're supposed to do is in the chat you're supposed to put ha ha ha ha ha ha but if you're laughing obviously you you can't actually get your fingers to do the ha ha the that's gonna be hard because you're trying to read the chat you're trying to remember your your bit and uh yeah yeah but but yeah i mean we have to kind of get used to that but lurkers are fantastic you know there's nothing

wrong with a with um i'm getting feedback is great it's i mean i'm so pleased i put in the book um the people to post things, post pitches about it because it means that I've been able to connect with the, the, the readers. Um, and, um,

you know, I've actually got, you know, they've turned into friends. It's, it is interesting to me, just like our conversation we're having is we've been, we've been just kind of rotating through each other's universe.

And I'm like, yeah, I mean, after a while I'm real face guy. And so I recognize a lot of pictures. And so I, I'll see the same avatars, the same faces.

And I'll be like, I know that guy, he's been around for a long time, but I never really talked to him. I never really sat down with him. And thank God my podcast allows me to have some fun with that, where I can get to know people. And it,

it kind of helps me discover people where, you know, you're rotating in these sort of like solar system sort of things. And then suddenly the planets come close together and you're like, hey. And then you find somebody and you're like, wow, why didn't I get to know you better sooner? And it's just one of those things with the economy of what people's time and lives are. But it's just interesting, the serendipity of, of the whole nature of it. Um, I've been lucky enough where, you know, I've done a lot of videos on YouTube now and the videos are over 12 years old and there are still people watching 12 year old videos. emails from YouTube and somebody's commenting on stuff. The worst ones, because I've done reviews are the ones where somebody's going like, how come this doesn't work anymore? I can't get it to work.

And you're, you're like, look at the date stamp. You're like, cause that's an electronic product with a battery from 2001. You fool. That thing's done. Like,

give it up. I'll get it. I've been, I've been blogging and writing for um five six years and i get people coming to me you know from blogs that have written five six years ago yeah wow that's really amazing and i'm going like well it is still current because social is still important but you know i do think well i wrote that six years ago it's a bit like um i guess if you were a musician i'm not but if you were a musician and

you know it's like you know i think your first album is really great it's like well yeah but i'm on the sixth album now and that's really you know that's what i'm into you know the first album we kind of wrote when we were students but you know it's like but so but it's it's great getting feedback and great but getting people contacting me and saying it's it's it's cool to have a body of work um where it stretches back that far and like people have seen it like we just recently passed 500 episodes in the chris faust show wow i think there's we're closing on like 4 000 videos on youtube and i think there's like 60 million views over there which is astounding that anyone would want to watch anything I do 60 million times

but you look at the body of work and how it's consumed and it's still being consumed you know I'm still being paid for all that old crap by YouTube like I've told my family if i die make sure you get in the youtube checking account and keep collecting those checks because as long as that media is up it just keeps paying it's just it's it's it's really weird to look at the back

side of it and go wow i didn't maybe i should have done more when i was uh starting out and doing this stuff because I didn't realize the longevity of it all. I mean, I kind of did, but I didn't really think it would still be like a thing after 10 years. I thought there'd be something new. Yeah, it's strange. I mean, I've only done

like 100, 120 interviews. But there's a number of things about podcasts. One is you actually get to meet the person. And I think there's really great actually talking to somebody and spending time with them. And I recommend anybody to start a podcast. Okay.

Not just everybody, but some people should do a podcast. I think everyone has one at this point, especially when you interview somebody and meet them. But that, but that thing is about that, that legacy of, of your work um

you know we quite often say to people we we you know we we teach people how to blog um and get sales people to actually create content and and you and there are always a thousand reasons and excuses you know i can't write no one will want to listen to what i've got to say um um i can't spell and all of those things and we all go through those things but actually people do want to hear what you say and

you know we're a great example I'm going to say both of us you know we've got no talent but people want to hear what we've got to say and you know and it's true and anything that you post got to say. And, you know, and it's true. And anything that you post on social, I'm talking about, you know, people that might be watching this,

and you post about yourself, you'll get far more engagement about posting about yourself than posting about what your company is telling you to post. It's interesting, too, where people have that identification, um, where, uh, we all kind of the same challenges in life, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So we, one of our clients, their sales guy, he wrote an article about, um,

with the lockdown, he got an extra 90 minutes a day because he had a commute into London, which is 45 minutes each way so he was able to spend more time with his children and it just blew up i mean it was one of those things everyone would go oh yeah yeah really yeah yeah duncan you know i think that's really great and it's the same with me and you know i feel really really concerned about the situation but it does mean i'm able to spend more time with my family and and it's like he just couldn't believe how much how much engagement he got and of course because he's

got all that engagement it gives him an opportunity to say um uh for the people that he's already connected to he's able to say i hope you like my blog why don't we just get on a call and have a chat yeah and they go well okay that's a good idea and for the people he wasn't connected to um he was able to go, thanks for liking my blog. Can we connect? So he's then got them as a – and they're just growing his network. It's a great opportunity just to connect with people.

People want people. What was interesting to me was I used to do a lot of the PR posts, keep a lot of my stuff private off the line. I wasn't hiding anything. It's not like I'm putting bodies in the basement or anything. I mean, I am, but I'm not going to tell anybody that. But, you know,

I always kind of live my life as a PR basis and then I started to have calamities that would befall me, like my dog passed away. Your dog posts go ballistic. Yeah, and I really was on the fence about talking about that. Losing weight was another conundrum that I wasn't excited to share with people. And what happened was it really opened other people up. Like when I shared my dog conversations with myself when my dog passed away,

at first I was really reluctant to share it. And then I shared it and went, okay, well, whatever. I'm just going to – you know, I have a wife or kids, so my family is online. So I shared it, and I had people writing me crying going i had no idea what you wrote was beautiful and i had no idea that i hadn't gotten closure with my father mother dog i mean it turned to this thing and and i realized that the human experience the human um the human um thing that we go through is life. We're all kind of going through some of the same sort of experiences or have gone through the same

sort of experiences and being able to talk about that and, and, uh, and stew in it and share those experiences and lift each other up and help each other with life lessons. I mean, that's really what we do with the stories that we make, the stories that we tell, the movies and everything that we do. We're all trying to use these as lessons to go through life. And so then I just pretty much threw out all the, what would you call it, all the authenticity. I thought I'd always been authentic, but I hadn't always shared everything. And I threw away everything and said, if I want to talk about something, I'll talk about something. It's always been interesting how it brings out other people and their pain, their struggles,

and we end up hopefully lifting all boats together. Yeah. remember when your your dog died um and um i remember you know you writing a post about and you were posting pictures of it had cancer didn't it um and and you know it would bring a tear to your eye yeah and then i remember that you posted a picture of getting a new puppy and it was just a wonderful thing and here i am sitting in London watching that and seeing that going on and I've had pets all my life and there's one thing that you know about the pet is you'll probably, you see the pet, you're probably going to see the pet die before you

and that's something you have to live with. I've had a cat recently and I still don't think I'm over it. It's 18 months. It wasn't even my cat. It was my partner's cat recently that, and I'm still don't think I'm over it. It's 18 months. It wasn't even my cat. It was my partner's cat. Oh, and,

but the thing is, is that you recognize that. And, you know, seeing that, you know, I remember, I remember you,

you had a problem with your neighbor because your dog was, and they thought you were basically mistreating your dog. Oh, that's right. They walked to the back and they saw the cancer on the back end of the dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, you see, I'm remembering the stuff. Yeah, well.

And it was a real, and then I remember you getting the puppy. And it was like, oh, yeah, great. He's got a puppy. That's brilliant um and um i mean you're the dogs that you've chosen to have are not exactly um ones you put in your handbag are they so um um you know so so what you you you know the responsibility um but but yes it's and people don't realize that actually that's what people want. They don't want that. You know, everybody markets is by my product because it's great. And because everybody does that, no one's interested.

But if it sells people or, you know, say, yeah, I actually have a dog. This is my dog. You know, it's,

it's, it's old. It's, you know, we don't take it for a walk anymore. It goes for a drag or whatever it is and actually talk about it. That's what people are interested in. And a lot more people are doing that.

They're not selling directly as much. Well, I don't know if a lot. I don't know how many people are using it. I'm seeing stuff like on TikTok or Instagram where instead of just showing the product and they're like, buy X, Y, Z, they're doing videos showing the use of the product and how to, how to utilize it. Like I know on Tik TOK, there's one guys and they have like some sort of food seasoning, you know, like a dash, you know, like it's just some sort of food seasoning. You're

sprinkling your steaks and your meats and stuff. And it's pretty unspectacular when you think about it. It's just like, here's some seasoning. There's 50 million other seasonings like it in the world. Why should you buy this one? I don't know. Just click it and buy it. But on TikTok, they sell the sizzle. They show the usage of it. And the guy gets on there and he's got these big, giant pieces of meat.

And he's like, shake all the seasoning on it. He shows how you cook it and the taste and you get done watching you're like hey i gotta work some of that right yeah absolutely yeah uh and so it's it's really cool uh how those sort of changes are making where you're seeing the more experiential ends of products and everything else yeah i think that the the you know the uh the classic way of of marketing is over where you just everybody just says blandly buy my stuff because it's brilliant i mean you of course no one ever says buy my product because it's shit so everybody has to

say buy my product because it's good but everybody says it yeah um and the thing is is that you know quite often we're actually not sophisticated to know the difference. I mean, I don't know the difference of different types of seasoning. Yeah. I just, and I'm not going to be bothered to go out and investigate. And if this guy's saying, this looks good, we go, well, I'll give it a punt. Yeah. Why not?

And you see it in use. You see how it tastes. You see people's reaction. I bought some and it in use. You see how it tastes. You see people's reaction. I bought some, and it's great. And, you know, it's kind of like, God, you remember the old days when you would go to, like, events and conventions? Ever go to cooking one, and there's that cooking booth,

and the guy's got the knives, and he's, like, you know, he's selling it. Selling the set of knives, yeah. And you see him, you you know he's doing all the magic and you're like oh i want to take that i was like i can do that too it's interesting how uh this social media world works so you talk about this in both your books and marketing and in the first one yes so in in in social selling techniques doing fringe buyers and change makers um that book is actually written to enable salespeople to social sell.

So it's not about me and my journey or shit like that. It's all about, and it's not about how to use LinkedIn. It's about how to use social. And it's actually written as a framework. So it's a book that I actually tell people to get the book rather than the Kindle because I've actually got people that have highlighted stuff and read it three times and got post-it notes through it um and um and smarting is is just is slightly different so smarting is actually how to bring a sales and marketing organization together

to to work together because I've worked in organizations where they generally throw stones at each other through email and won't talk to each other and stuff like that. And we actually used a case study of an organization that brought their sales and marketing together. So it's really for senior leaders, either senior marketing leaders or senior sales leaders that think they need to be work closer and we think that in a in a social world you need to be

there's certain things that's marketing need to be doing certain sales things and sales need to be some doing certain marketing things and certainly when when i've worked in organizations where we actually got the truces and the white flags and actually got people in the same meeting rooms and talking the same language about what a lead is, for example, that seemed to work better. It's interesting to me how things are evolving. I've seen move away from influencers a little bit. And it seems to have gone back to some organizations I've seen just going back to just selling like, just like, we're just going to straight sell. What do you, what are you seeing on your end of the world or what are you seeing in marketing

online? I think so. So influencer marketing is becoming, I think in a business to consumer environment, we're not seeing so many influences because a lot of it is just adverts. So, you know, Kim Kardashian wears a dress to a fashion thing.

It's an advert really. But we're seeing it certainly more in business to business. So we're seeing people like SAP, HP, people like that. Adobe are using influencers i mean adobe have got some results about they they've invited influencers to one of their conferences and they got far more impressions than they could have done by buying adverts yeah and but the difficulty is that brands still think that they own, that the people are interested in the brand, and the fact is the matter is people are not.

They're interested in the influencer. Yeah. So, you know, if Chris Voss demonstrates the new Samsung phone, people are interested in the Samsung phone, but they're actually more interested in Chris Voss. Yeah. And maybe the experience, would you say more of the experience or, or I don't know.

I get these people on YouTube every now and then they'll be like, you're your review of, and usually it's because I've reviewed something poorly. Like you'll be like, you review those headphones and those headphones, your review sucks. And I own these headphones and they're greatest headphones ever and i'll be like well that's cool man but you know i've reviewed like 200 headphones and i have like a yeah there's a whole pile to the right of me of headphones that are reference headphones that we keep for you know the comparison testing references. Um, so I'm like, you know, you can say my review shit,

but you know, I mean, it's interesting to me. And a review is an opinion anyway. This is, this is Chris Ross's opinion. And if you didn't like Chris Ross's opinion, we're fine.

Well, um, so I mean, so we're, so I think, so, so influence of marketing is changing um but i think people are having difficulty currently in during covid19 because of the fact

that um you know everybody has moved online yeah um i tell the story about my um my 82 year old mother um who was told she could she runs a wine group so they 10 82 year old people get together in a room and drink wine someone gives a presentation and then they all drink it um and they were told she was told you can't run that on zoom um and i said of course you can and i said you'll get you'll get one of the people to deliver the bottles so that's what they've done so she she runs a wine group, and they all sit on Zoom, and a man drives around. I don't know.

He's probably got like a TR6 or something. He drives around, and he drops the bottles on the doorsteps, and they drink their wine. Churches online, scouts is online. My mom's wine group's online. We're all used to being online. Why do we need to do anything else what do you think is going to happen after all this because i believe that people are going to be so used to living the way that let's say you and i are used to being

living i've been working from home since 2004 yeah um they're gonna they're gonna get used to this and maybe they won't be as outgoing and out social what do you think um it was an interesting reaction today i got i was on a call today internal call um and a couple of people said you went for a meal so how did you do that well i just went out and had a meal you'll be dead into was the answer um and but that was the that was the that that was from intelligent people giving their advice so people are scared about going out yeah um what do you think when it what do you think i mean i'm assuming that we get a a uh some sort of you know some sort of inoculation to this um uh you know keep fingers crossed or maybe we just all become herd immunity after

several years to this thing um do you think people go back to being the full thing or will they stay in like maybe i don't want to go to the soccer game or the football game in your country uh i'll just stay home watching on zoom or the telly i think it will i think some people will go because um yeah they like the social aspect of it but i think a lot of people will make a choice to to stay in yeah um and um and they won't go out because everything you want is is online as long as you've got a an ipad and a um and an internet connection what else do you need yeah you know you've got an iPad and an internet connection, what else do you need? You know, you can get your food delivered, you can meet your friends.

I've got my parents' 60th wedding anniversary this Thursday. Oh, wow. And it's going to be socially distanced. My father's in a home, so he's got dementia, so he's not going to really know what's going on anyway. But, you know, it's just impacted society so much. Yeah. You know, if we'd all said, let's have a Zoom weekend,

everyone would have said, no, no, I won't bother taking part. Yeah. But now that we've had, like, a Zoom three months, I think everybody will... There's a lot of people that won't want taking part. Yeah. But now that we've had like a Zoom three months, I think everybody will. There's a lot of people that won't want to go into. I can't see myself going into London for meetings this year. Yeah.

Traveling, speaking, doing gigs, events. I know CES is going to have a big show in January. And it'll be interesting to see how that goes. I think that's going to be the first real big event that will challenge status quo on where we're at right now. Hopefully by then, fingers crossed, we'll have some inoculation or some sort of vaccine or just better ways to prevent the spread of the disease so that we can have a healthy thing. I'm sure it won't be the size of show disease so that we can have a healthy thing but i'm sure it won't be the size of show that it's ever been in the last i don't know it got pretty small during

the last recession that we had um but it'll be interesting to see how it goes through the rest of it yeah i think that i think the two things we need is the is the inoculation or the herd immunity and until we get those i i think certainly in in the uk we've all been pretty much scared to the government did a really good job at scaring us to stay inside yeah and i can't really see us changing that it was kind of interesting your leader picked up uh johnson picked up uh covet 19 that was kind of looking dicey that was scary yeah i kind of we kind of look dicey. Yeah, that was scary. We kind of look at our leaders and go, maybe you guys need some of that

to get some more empathy. Yeah, well, there was actually a situation where the whole of the pretty much the whole of the top table got it. Really? At the same time. I think I remember that, yeah.

And what happened was, was well it was kind of kept kind of kept quiet so they got this one person who was going to be the um he was he's not the deputy leader but they'd said you're the nominated leader if something goes uh bad i was going to say wrong phrase then but uh if it goes bad and they actually had to put him in. Wow. And, and Boris was out for two, three weeks. Yeah. And then they put him on oxygen. Yeah.

It was getting a little weird when I heard that. I was like, that ain't good. I mean, I thought he was out. I thought, I thought, oh my God, you know, we've had Brexit. Then we had a general election. Now we've got COVID-19 and now our leader's dead. What are we going to do? And then you've got Russians running around dropping

radio isotopes in people's drinks. That's crazy. Perfume. Was that what it was? Yeah, the second lot. lot was in a perfume spray holy crap and what happened was that

when the people that did it left the scene they put the perfume in the bin just in a public bin so these two people who were basically his girlfriend used to be homeless. So she went through the bin and found this perfume and went,

oh, this is great. Spray, spray, spray, spray. She was dead a couple of hours later. And he was like, and he's only just like recovered. Wow. Well, it looks like the government's going after him. So what's the future of social media and social media marketing in your mind? What do you see happening in the next few years maybe the effect of what covet 19 is doing

do you see uh more experiential marketing more um more of this type of marketing we've been talking about or do you see cold ads coming back what do you what do you see in the future i think that over the last um last three, people have moved on social. They used to. It's a natural thing to do. We're used to using Zoom. We're used to working remotely. And we're used to – if and if you were in a situation where you didn't use social before. You do now. I mean, if you look at Simon Kemp's,

I don't know if you look at, there's a guy in Singapore that comes up with these figures, Simon Kemp. You know, 300 million people joined social media last year. And I think that it will be interesting to see his new figures coming out because I think that will have accelerated. Yeah, definitely. You've seen more daily active users on Facebook, on Twitter.

Yeah, so I think Twitter has seen usage go up by 50%. WhatsApp has seen usage go up by 50%. So we're used to that. And it's now, you know, if you want to buy something, we now search and we go online and we look people up. And that's kind of a natural thing, whether we're business to consumer or business to business. So this is pre-COVID.

So in November last year, BMW, one of the dealers in the UK, they got 28 pieces of inbound through linkedin um now this is a business to consumer organization but it's still a bmw is still a considered purchase so they got 28 pieces of inbound um of that of those 14 converted to sales wow if you take that 14 times say you know a know, a BMW is what, $50,000? 14 times $50,000, that's an additional $700,000 of revenue for zero marketing spend. Yeah. And that same month, Jaguar Land Rover, one of their competitors, announced that they

were cutting production because they weren't selling. Oh, wow. So what you're seeing is that there's winners and losers taking place in terms of people that are using social. I mean, selling BMWs on LinkedIn, that's because people who buy BMWs are on LinkedIn. Yeah. But this is just an example of people that are able to use social in a way to connect with people, build relationships with people

and then buy stuff because it's know, like and trust. If you'll buy from people you know, from people you know, like and trust. What was interesting to me was that really COVID-19 really, people that were staying in the brick and mortar space and they hadn't converted to online.

They're like, we're making plenty of money with brick and mortar. We don't need a mailing list. We don't need to be online ads. We don't need to worry about, you know, what our Google search says about us. We're making so much money. And with uh covid19 you know everything suddenly went online and and it went down and they were saying we're making loads of money now it's big fat zero yeah and fortunately the companies that were smart that had built mailing lists that had built you know customer contacts they could still reach out to the customers and say, hey, we're still open. Hey, we're still in business. Hey, here are some specials.

Come see us and stuff. And you went to those businesses as opposed to a lot of the businesses that you weren't sure if they were still open. They're still not updating their Yelp or their Google with their new hours, so you don't know if they're coming or going. And the other thing that happened is ads got a lot cheaper because there wasn't as much demand for ads. A lot of people quit buying ads on Facebook and everything because, you know, they just pulled back the purse to see what was going to happen. And so the cost to advertise online,

but a lot of companies that hadn't invested in, you know, online conversion and been thinking they were safe from brick and mortar, found that they were upended. And then now you've got to try and scramble. It's like, oh, we should have been collecting for the last 10 years emails and phone numbers of our customers so that we could communicate with them and get them back into the stores once we reopen from COVID-19. I'm sure there's lots of web building companies that were called up three days into lockdown

from those retailers and have meetings. We have a company in the UK, Primark, which sells, in effect, you can get like a shirt for $10, $15. You don't need to wash it. You just throw it away. Oh, wow.

And they have no online presence at all. And they went from last March, April, they made about $750 million. Holy crap. And they went to zero, nothing because they had to show the shops. Wow. And they went to zero. Nothing. Because they had to shut all the shops.

Wow. They've only just opened. Obviously in a social distancing way. I don't know what their figures are going to be like. But there must be people that have been scrambling to do stuff online. And the fact of the matter is we now prefer it because we're used to it why would i why would i go outside and be coughed and sneezed on when i can see and you want to know who's who's got good uh you know you want to know which companies are one of the things i saw early on

from the mailers i was getting in the ads i was see running is is like we have a safe environment here no one touches your food. We're all wearing masks. I like going to stores that I know, like Home Depot here. They have tape around the cashier, and they're like, please don't get in this area. The cashier had masks early on at Home Depot. And then I go to other stores, and they have masks. And I'm like, ah, okay, wow, okay.

So we're rolling the dice with my life here. And I prefer the stores that, you know, are following the rules where I don't have to, you know, they seem to be, you know, you see them cleaning stuff and you're like, okay, well, people are, you know, they're aware of what's going on. And then, you know, you go into other places, they're just dice rolling it. But I think it definitely, hopefully, many of those businesses will survive, but it will give them a shot across the bow that they need to get online. They need to develop their mailing list.

They need to deliver their marketing. One of the problems I was having right before COVID-19 that was driving me crazy with events is I was contacting a lot of companies on their Twitter and their Facebook fan page accounts. And over the last couple of years, it just seemed like they gave up on them. Like no one was monitoring them. No one was answering them. I've seen their Twitter accounts weren't being, you know, last time somebody checked in, it was like 2017. And there seemed to be this, I don't know, everyone was making so much money and the economy was going so good.

People weren't worrying about these assets anymore. And now they've got to worry about them because it's like, this is the way you communicate with people. I think you're 100%. I think there's a lot of people that went into social media. And the view is still at a C-level. Is that social media is for kids. You know, it's for posting pictures of your lunch and cat photos. And actually social media is a serious business now.

You know, that's where everybody is. It's where your prospects and your clients are and you need to be there. Otherwise you're invisible. Yeah. So, and I think a lot of people are suddenly realizing that. I mean, we've had a number of companies that rang us up. And, you know, we've been talking to them for six months. And there's always another priority.

And then all of a sudden they rang us up and said, you know, like today's Monday, they said, we need you in on Friday. Well, why? Because what's changed? Don't be so stupid. We know what's changed. Get in here and sort us out. And we've had a lot of people that have said, you know, we need to go on social and be doing it and doing it quick um otherwise we're not

relevant anymore yeah we've also seen the buying process change in in big companies because discretionary spend has been stopped yeah um so there's a number of cases where um you you understand the buying cycle, you talk to all the different people, you connect to them, and you're talking at VP or SVP level, and the whole deal then comes and it has to go up to the CEO. And the CEO you don't have a relationship with, and they just cut it. So even now, there's more people that you've got to talk to,

more relationships you've got to build, and you can't do that face-to-face, and it's tough. Yeah, and people, like you say, let's just crush their income. People aren't as free with the cash as they used to be. We used to do a lot of events. People used to throw a lot of stupid cash around and be like, are you really going to pay for that? And I'm sure things are going to be quite different now

as people go back into it. So anything more we need to know about Timothy and some of your books and stuff? What you guys do online? No, just social selling techniques to influence buyers and change makers. Available on Amazon Worldwide.

85 five-star reviews last time i looked nice um yeah it's it's uh um people love it and and if you you want to know about the way that the world has changed then then it's a great book to read and it's definitely important now because you need to get your business online so you can recommend that and then there's marketing as well that people can check out. Yes. But it's been wonderful to have you on, Timothy. We need to have you on more, and we need to chat about what's going on,

especially between our two countries. Absolutely. Plus, I need a friend to bunk with or get a couch crash with. We've got a spare room, Chris, when you're in London next. If certain things happen in November, I'm going i mean you get the hell out of this country the the only problem is it's three flights of stairs so uh you know you get the exercise there you go well i might not i'm having a choice and most likely i won't be able to fly and i'll have to take a rowboat and row across and come under the, uh, November is going to be interesting.

I think I'm going to sit up and watch it. Uh, it will be interesting. I think the ride up to it's going to be interesting as well. Well, Timothy, it's been wonderful to get to know you better, have you on the show and everything.

Uh, I encourage my audience to go check out Timothy on, we'll have him on more often as, as the future of social marketing develops and how this plays in with COVID-19. Be sure to go to our channels, the CVPN.com, Chris Voss Podcast Network, and YouTube.com for just Chris Voss, and subscribe to the show there. Be sure to give the show a recommendation if you're listening in. You can go to iTunes and go to the recommendation section.

They give it five stars and tell people why you like it. You can also reach out to me, of course, at Twitter, Chris Voss, and Facebook and LinkedIn, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, give us any comments or whatever on the show. Look for some of the great gifts great guests will continue to have on the Chris Voss show. So thanks, Monarchs, for tuning in. We'll see you next time.