Social Influencer Series | Dan Swift CEO, Empire Selling
As we cannonball into 2022 so much has changed. A global pandemic has given us social distancing and a new world order. WFH and Zoom calls have become a part of our daily routine in the business world. We are also going through the Great Resignation, a phenomenon in which millions in the workforce are leaving their jobs for something better.
To that end, we are shifting the focus of the Social Influencer Series a bit to a career and life reinvention theme. Call it a “You 2.0”. The goal is to connect with Social Influencers who have traded in their corporate job for something bigger and better for them. Every story is different. Every journey is individualized, but they share a common thread - inspiration through reinvention. Our goal is to connect you with with their stories and formula for personal success.
Our first interview is with Dan Swift, CEO of Empire Selling. He left an incredibly successful career track in hi-tech sales leadership to launch his own digital sales training company, Empire Selling. He went from leading a team of 30 to training over 10,000 sales professionals world wide and he did it all with the headwind of a global pandemic. His company has more than doubled in size and in revenue and his passion for what he is doing is a big part of that success.
I caught up with Dan recently (via Zoom, Social and Email ironically) and here is a snapshot of what he had to say:
You launched Empire Selling before COVID and the WFH revolution. How has that impacted your business?
That’s right, Mark. I launched Empire Selling on January 1, 2018. Side note, it was the best sales success story of my career – selling the idea to my wife of leaving the role of Divisional Vice President at one of the fastest growing software companies in the world – to become a sole practitioner. Joking aside, she has been supportive from Day 1 and firmly believes in me, and Empire.
Fortunately, Empire got off to an incredibly fast start. When I made the position change on my LinkedIn profile, former bosses, colleagues and friends reached out immediately wanting me to come and train their people. I was doing key notes at sales kickoffs at Sailthru, Lotame, and Sovos within weeks of launching the business. Key to Empire’s early success was landing contracts with companies across industry sectors and of all shapes and sizes. I feel very blessed to have had the opportunity to test and learn on companies like American Express Global Business Travel, APT Mastercard, and SAP.
I was unable to deliver against the demand for digital sales training as a sole practitioner even before the pandemic, so I made the call to hire industry leaders including Jordan Sciabica and Rebecca Takada to help serve said demand in early 2019. We doubled sales in 2019 and then the pandemic hit. Our business model was pandemic proof. The ongoing monthly training sessions as part of our annual contracts were always virtual. The only thing new in response to the pandemic was converting SKO material that was normally taught in an in-person environment, to a virtual experience. As you can imagine, the immediate WFH environment expedited our growth to allow us to double sales again in 2021 and 2022.
What has been fascinating though, Mark, has been the way we have grown. The number of annual customer engagements we do each year has steadily increased but the size of the agreements has exploded. Companies used to tip-toe into digital and social selling programs, seeing it as one of a multitude of options for expediting growth and serving the customers. With a workforce still predominantly working from home, companies have to teach sellers these skills to make them productive and successful or they will leave adding to the great resignation statistics. You’ll have seen we just hired another LinkedIn Veteran, Jesse Rothstein, to help deliver against market demand, and we have more key hires to make in 2022.
Going back in time (LinkedIn and building out Navigator/Social Selling) - what was your vision for what companies could be doing with the help of social and what are you seeing them doing now?
As you know, social media provides an opportunity for sales people and the companies that employ them to build incredible brands, reach people more easily, build and maintain relationships, and quickly find and engage with the right people within target companies and customer organizations.
The vision hasn’t changed since 2012 but what has changed is how people use LinkedIn and digital tools in their day-to-day processes. You only have to look at today’s sales technology stack at a typical software company to realize the shift that has taken place. The sales technology industry has blown up, matured and is now beginning to consolidate in 2022.
My vision back then was for all salespeople to understand the power of the LinkedIn network, and how they could leverage relationships to get in the door to decision makers and influencers, and in doing so limit the amount of cold outreach needed to be successful. Side note, I am very uncomfortable with where the sales technology industry has taken the sales community. So many people think they can just upload names into automated tools and blast them with messages. What they are not thinking about enough is the corporate and personal brand damage that is taking place with all the unsubscribes from people receiving unsolicited messages. This will hinder the growth trajectories of companies.
Back to your question. Now, companies are leaning in heavily to digital selling. They realize that having sellers be brand ambassadors is critical. They are baulking at the sheer size of the investments being made in sales technology and realizing the need for outside enablement to help sellers realize the potential of these investments.
And don’t forget, over the last 10 years, while all of this has been going on, buyer behavior has changed massively. It is harder today for sellers to cut through the noise to get a conversation that it has ever been before. How we help companies is business critical for companies to survive and thrive in today’s world.
What are the top three trends (maybe channels or strategies) that you are seeing in social selling?
One, Sellers are learning how to use LinkedIn effectively as part of a go-to-market corporate strategy. We get companies aligned internally across their revenue engines so all departments (executives, sales leadership, sales, marketing, sales enablement and sales operations) are in lock-step when it comes to leveraging LinkedIn. This internal alignment allows sellers to 10x their productivity and success from LinkedIn. Prescription is key for sellers. They need to know what to do, when and how to achieve a desired outcome. While this is happening, LinkedIn is developing as a platform, and growing as a community. You get out of LinkedIn what you put in. For example, you have to post 2 times a day on LinkedIn to influence your ever increasing network. If all you post is corporate stuff produced by your company, you have an adverse effect on your network, and people will zone you out. If you take a blended approach and share corporate content, along with industry content from reputable third party sources (that they should be reading themselves as industry professionals), then the seller starts bringing real value to their networks. Sprinkle in some personal posts here and there to humanize yourself to your network, people start coming to you for conversations. The first person they will think to call when they have a business problem is you, the seller.
Two, Video is becoming an increasingly interesting channel for sellers to engage their target buyers and influencers. I’m not talking about sellers recording videos to post to their feeds, although that will happen in the coming years as video becomes more mainstream for them and business at large, but I’m talking about recording 45-60 second videos to send to an individual prospect or contact. The channel on which these videos are sent depends on where the buyer is active. That could be LinkedIn Message, InMail, Email, WhatsApp etc. And not just for prospecting. Think about your customers. They would rather watch a quick video before a meeting to understand what will be covered to prepare accordingly, or after a proposal meeting to share with the members of the buying committee who were unable to make the meeting. So many other use cases. Video is going to be huge for the sales industry.
Three, We call it digital selling because one strategy in isolation does not work when your buyers are active across a multitude of platforms and channels. By way of example, you might find the right person using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Get on their radar by engaging with what they post and getting accepted into their network. Influence them about you and your company by what you post on LinkedIn. Get a meeting by sending a video message, via email, referencing your LinkedIn connection, or by leveraging a LinkedIn connection to introduce you via email. Sending a video message before your first meeting to suggest an agenda and asking for input, as well as sending a package of content using Highspot or SmartLinks to make it easy for the recipient to access and review the materials, while giving you engagement data and insights as to what could be most interesting for the meeting. I could go on but you get my point. To start a conversation, engage the buying committee and take a deal through your sales process and their buying journey into today’s business environment, takes a comprehensive understanding of, and competency with, a multitude of channels and tools.
You have a wife and three beautiful kids - you had an amazing career on track in hi-tech leadership...what inspired you to make that leap and take on all of that risk - launching Empire Selling?
Ha! You mean I have a beautiful wife and three beautiful kids. I know what you meant. In all seriousness, I could only influence the lives of a small number of sellers as a Divisional Vice President at a software company. I might have had 30 or so people rolling into me and the folks around my business unit in the cross-functional teams. Perhaps 50 total. What gets me out of bed every morning is helping people to realize their potential to provide the best lives for themselves and their families. Taking the leap was all about making an impact on the world. We have now trained more than 10,000 sales people around the world, and know the impact we are having on those people both personally and professionally. That feels good to know we are making a difference, and having a lot of fun along the way.
We are going through the Great Resignation. What advice would you give to future entrepreneurs who are thinking about trading in their career and putting it on the line to launch their own company?
Great question. Are you running to something, or running away from something? It matters. And you have to be passionate about whatever you plan to build your business on. You’ll be thinking about it, or should be, all the time. That’s the life of a small business owner. But passion in itself isn’t enough. You also have to have competency. If you have an entrepreneurial idea, think it through and plan your business while you are gainfully employed. Don’t make the leap until you know you are absolutely ready, have a business plan, have validated it with trusted people in your network who importantly would be your buyers. Listen to them. Don’t let your excitement or ego cloud your decision making. And when you launch, go all in. But don’t forget to keep the balance. In today’s world, we’re talking about work life integration. Do not let the business consume you. Remember what’s important and why you’re doing it. For me, family.
Speed Round:
First Empire Customer? Sailthru.
Most important social network for social selling? Too easy..what are the big-3 for real social selling?
LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter (in that order).
XING in Germany, Sina Weibo in China.
Book you'd recommend? Carry that Quota - Jesse Rothstein.
Book you're currently reading?
I’m in between books right now but find myself reading a lot about human behavior. That might be Forbes, HBR, BBC. I like to dip in and out of things as my brain sees fit.
Celebratory Cocktail and Hashtag?
Hasn’t changed since the last interview Mark. Bourbon, large ice cube, and a cherry. For hashtag #bringinghumanback, of course.
About the interviewer:
Mark Keaney is a Husband, Dad, Coach, Mentor and Leader. With over 20 years of experience in the media industry and a wild ride in the world of tech start-up & social - Mark is helping brands deliver world class CX at Khoros, where he is the Vice President of Sales for North America. His mantra is - Brand Globally. Market Locally.
email: markkeaney8@gmail.com or twitter: @markkeaney2pt0
