Speaker 0:01

Welcome to The Heart-Led Business Show, where compassion meets commerce and leaders lead with love. Join your host, Tom Jackobs, as he delves into the insightful conversations with visionary business leaders who defy the status quo, putting humanity first and profit second. From heartfelt strategies to inspiring stories, this podcast is your compass in the world of conscious capitalism. So buckle up and let your heart guide your business journey.

Tom Jackobs 0:36

Well, welcome back to the Heart-Led Business Show. Today we're thrilled to have Brynne Tillman in the heart of the studio as the savvy CEO of Social Sales Link, and the co-author of the LinkedIn Edge and Prompt Writing Made Easy. Brynne is all about sparking trust-based conversations without sleazy sales pitches just like me. And join us as we dive into her journey of leading with heart and how she's transforming the way professionals connect on LinkedIn and beyond. So let's get to the conversation. Brynne, welcome to the show.

Brynne Tillman 1:06

Oh my gosh. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Defining Heart Led Business

Tom Jackobs 1:10

I'm excited as well. And we had recorded your show as well and what I loved about just being on your show and you in general is that we're very well synced on the whole sales and not being sleazy and all that. So I'm really excited to dive into that and your story, but of course, the first thing I always like to ask is, what's your definition of a heart-led business?

Brynne Tillman 1:32

So I love this and I actually spent believe it, not like 15 or 20 minutes working on this'cause I think it is one of the most powerful questions, whether you're a guest on your show or you're just running a business to have your definition of this, especially if you want to be heart-led, like you should know how to articulate it. And I realized I hadn't done that. So here's what I came up with. I'm not gonna read it. I'm gonna see how much did I actually embrace it. So people first, no business that's heart-led should have the first focus beyond commissions. Your KPIs should not have the first focus on how many dollars are we gonna bring in this week, this month, this quarter, this year. It should be on how many people can we make an impact on? How many clients can we help? How many employees can we lift up? So heart-led business is not only external, it's internal too. In fact, it probably needs to start internally. When you can treat your people, empower your people, and enable your people to develop into the best people they can be, that is going to get paid forward with your clients, with your community, with your network. So we have a line, which is where I kind of started in our business, although we have 21 tenants to social selling. My favorite is detach from what the prospect is worth to you and attach to what you are worth to the prospect. And when you do that, you will be heart-led because it's about making the best choices, guiding your clients to make the best decisions that will lead to your sale. So you'll lead to your sale, not with your sale.

Value First Sales Energy

Tom Jackobs 3:23

Yeah. I love the tenant and your definition as well. I wanted to really dive in and lean in a little bit on the definition as well, because I've seen this myself included, believe it or not and anytime that I've done that is okay, I'm focused on, I wanna make X amount this month on sales. And this early in my career, what do I need to do? And now I'll just do the math backwards to and not thinking about who am I going after? What is the value that I'm providing to that person? And it never worked out great, anytime that I looked at the value of what I provided to that prospect and then backed into, okay, how many people do I need to add value to? Then it started working a lot better.

Brynne Tillman 4:04

It's a significant shift that they can feel.

Tom Jackobs 4:08

Yeah.

Brynne Tillman 4:09

When you show up on a Zoom, you immediately know if you're being pitched, you can feel it. Especially when they start out with, we help businesses like you, we have helped clients just like you. And when it leads with that all you're doing is pitching. Now, one of the tenants that we are rewording right now, but the general concept is before you ever tell them that you can bring them value. Like you, you have to earn the right to be able to share how you can help them,

Tom Jackobs 4:45

Yeah.

Brynne Tillman 4:45

And you earn the right through being valuable through bringing insights early on for having an impact with no other goal except to bring them value and then they're excited to learn how you can help them more.

BANT Is Broken

Tom Jackobs 5:02

Yeah. Absolutely. Like you said, people can smell that a mile away when your intention is, what can I get out of this other person versus what is it that I can give to this person? And it's completely, the energy is completely different on the sales calls. I have this one client I've been working with for several years and every time that she comes up with a new program, it's, the program's gonna be$5,000 and it's gonna do this, and this. I'm like, okay, but what's the value? And finally, after several times of iterations of doing that, now it's okay, the value that I'm gonna provide to this, and the business has increased when the value to the prospect was being thought of before the value to the salesperson.

Brynne Tillman 5:42

This reminds me of, I grew up in the traditional, the traditional sales world, pre-internet, pre email, pre cell phones, prefax machines, right? Like I start and I'm older than I look, no. The pigeon the carrier pigeons. But in the nineties, like I, in the I graduated college in 1990, right? And I started in sales. That was my first career really in an inbound call center. But my point is, back in the day. The only way someone could get information was to call you and have a conversation or ask you to mail them something. There was no other way to research. Today we are required to do so much more so we in fact. I don't know what statistic is real anymore, 67% of the sales process is done before you ever even talk to the seller, right? Whatever that looks like. But here's what has to change along with the times BANT. BANT is broken, budget, authority, needs, and timing. So back in the day, one of the very first questions you would ask is, so before we get started, do you have budget set aside for this? They didn't even know what it was. And by the way, Jacob, are you the only decision maker in this, or are there other people we should be bringing into this call? Before they even know what we do. So we need to switch the conversation, whether it's in person or online. The prospecting mindset that I need to, the discovery mindset that I need to qualify you in or out. Too early is broken. A lot of my colleagues will say a quick no is the second best thing to a quick yes, and I disagree. Cause a quick no could be an uninformed no.

Tom Jackobs 7:34

Exactly. Yeah,

CHIRP Discovery Framework

Brynne Tillman 7:35

So we can miss a lot of opportunities to help someone, even if it means yes in a year. So BANT is gone. We're replacing it with chirp.

Tom Jackobs 7:46

Love it.

Brynne Tillman 7:47

What's going on in your world? What history? So C is challenge, H is history. When you look back at all the ways you've tried to fix this, what have you tried? And why don't you think it didn't work? And by the way, if it's still a challenge, it didn't work. So whatever they did. Most of the time it's like we didn't do very much. We're just living with it. But sometimes it's we tried this, it didn't work, we tried this, it didn't work. And then how is that impacting your business today? So, you could have what you think is a big challenge that has very little impact. I need to know that. And you need to know that. Is this something you should be spending time on? Because you may think it's a huge challenge. Maybe it's, you have, this is a client. You have someone that's going out on maternity leave and you don't know how to fill that for six months, and you think that's a huge challenge, but what is the impact in six months? Yeah, we could get through six months. Okay, so maybe you don't need someone at that top level to replace for six months so

Tom Jackobs 8:43

Yeah.

Brynne Tillman 8:43

Getting that squared away is important. The challenge and the impact should align as well as risk. So impact is today. Risk is tomorrow. If she doesn't come back in six months, what's the risk to the business? That's huge.

Tom Jackobs 8:58

Yeah.

Brynne Tillman 8:59

So it's not always the same thing. Impact today and risk in the future. And then P is priority. You may have 73 challenges on your plate. Where does this land? So if you notice this is all about them, it's not about do they have a budget that I can invoice to?

Tom Jackobs 9:20

It exact opposite of the way it should be done.

Brynne Tillman 9:24

So this is a heart-led business model in my mind.

Detach From the Sale

Tom Jackobs 9:28

Absolutely. Yeah. I love that framework too, that lays out exactly a really good flow to the conversation that feels natural and is focused on the prospect itself. That's awesome. The other thing that you mentioned early on in your definition was, or in the tenant, one of the tenants is detaching from

Brynne Tillman 9:47

Yeah.

Tom Jackobs 9:47

the what they can give to you. Yeah. Yeah I always say detach yourself from the sale itself, because it, at the end of the day, like I, and I used to tell people this too. I was like, Hey, if you buy this or don't buy this product. It's not gonna affect me a huge amount, but I know in the heart of hearts that it's going to make a huge difference for you. And so I would just detach myself from the outcome and verbalize that to the prospect to let them know that I have no intention of giving them something that they don't need or want, but I know that they need it, and that's why I'm pushing for them to get it.

Brynne Tillman 10:19

Yeah so I love that, that concept for sure. I think it's brilliant. I typically will start a call I'm really looking forward to this conversation today. When you booked the call, what were you hoping to achieve? And I like this. And sometimes they're like, I don't know, Joe said I should talk to you, so I'm talking to you. Okay. Or sometimes they say, you know what? We've really got this challenge where our top of the pipeline is dry. So now I know what's important to them and what at least they're perceiving is their priority, and I think that's really important. The next thing I'll say is that's great. So my goal is that at the end of this call that you walk away with some ideas to start to solve that challenge. If I can't or I don't have ideas, I have a really strong network of experts. In this area, would it be okay if I introduced you to someone who I think could help you?

Referrals and Trusted Network

Tom Jackobs 11:12

Love that.

Brynne Tillman 11:13

Yeah, and I believe 2026 is the year of referrals, but we have to start with being the referrer. My goal is to help them solve the problem, even if I can't. So maybe they say to me, really what our problem is before we can handle any of this is our CRM is a total mess. Everything is off. There's no process. We don't even, everything we report on is wrong. So before we even get into solving the process, we gotta solve our data. And I'm like, you know what? Start with Liz Hyman. I'll make that introduction. Once you get that, once you work with her,'cause she can fix this for you, let's talk again. I feel like sometimes I'm the GP, right? I'm diagnosing and sometimes your GP can fix it and sometimes you need an endocrinologist. I'm a GP and a LinkedIn specialist, so if that's your area, I'm ready to help you fill your pipeline with LinkedIn. But if it's anything else, I have a really strong network of people that I know bring a lot of value. So for me, a win is that I can help that prospect move forward. Solving that challenge that I help them uncover, even if I'm not the one getting the business.

Tom Jackobs 12:24

Yeah and, and I think if they have a great experience with that other person that you've referred to now, that great experience is a reflection on you. And if they solve that particular challenge, now they're indebted their mind a bit to you for making that introduction. And it would be natural for you to come back and, and hopefully you have the type of relationship with the person that you referred

Brynne Tillman 12:44

Yes.

Tom Jackobs 12:45

them to, that they will tell you how they're going along and potentially refer them back to you when it's time.

Brynne Tillman 12:52

Well, And sometimes we actually have that conversation. And I'll say, Liz, I believe you are the best sales process thinker in the world. I've never met anyone better, but I know you have a large network of other folks that do LinkedIn as well. But here's what I'm gonna ask, anyone I refer to you that you only send them back to me. What you do with your other people, you know, I hope you refer them to me. But you set the ground rules because that's important right? Now I have probably 8 or 10 people that I am referring all the time, but my business is coming from the referrals back, whether they're the same people that I sent their way or other. The key is the heart-led business mindset is that I'm gonna do what's best for that prospect. I am gonna bring them to the best people I know that can help them solve that business. And I have a relationship with them that hopefully I've earned the place of the best person to refer when they need LinkedIn for the top of the funnel.

From Cold Calls to LinkedIn

Tom Jackobs 13:50

Yeah. That's great. So let's shift gears just a little bit and let's talk a little bit about your business and how you balance having a heart-led business and still making a profit. Because I know a lot of heart-led business owners, they struggle with the whole idea. It's either or and I know in my world, in your world, it's an and you know, take me through the evolution of Brynne over time and how you've been able to have, get to where you are today.

Brynne Tillman 14:18

I started off kind of training in learning and training in the Sandler ish world. So the evolution is the 180, right? So, um, and rather than kind of walking through what that looks like, just know I had a year of cold calling. I had a year of inbound and I had a year of every single day. I had to make 80 ish, I think 60 to 80 outbounds every single day. When I was in the inbound, I was getting a hundred to 120 inbounds every day like crazy. I paid my dues in sales. I, I am not showing up saying I understand sales, but I never really did it myself. I did it all. I pounded pavement. I, when I sold for Kinko's, which some people may not even know what Kinko's is. It's now FedEx store, but I literally would knock on the doors in the town saying, Hey, do you have printing means? I did that. So the evolution came from, I'm sitting across the the aha moment was before LinkedIn where I was sitting across from a client staring at his overflowing Rolodex. I wonder how many listeners don't know what a Rolodex is.

Tom Jackobs 15:23

But the visual of the turning knob. I love that.

Brynne Tillman 15:26

It was a huge Rolodex all stapled in with posty notes and if I could get my hands on that. I'd be able to go through his connections, see who I didn't say connections, right? Business cards. I could go through his business cards, see who he knows and say, Hey Joe, here's some folks I'd love to meet. But what I was doing is saying, Hey Joe, who do you know that needs printing? I don't know who I know. And we still do that as salespeople. We go, Hey, I'm so glad we've been able to help you solve this problem. Who do you know that has this problem too? And they go, I don't know. Even if they wanna refer you, you haven't made it easy. Well, You might have earned it. So that's the, it could, you could have earned it, but they still dunno who to introduce you to. I remember a training that I sat through where they're like, ask them who they play golf with, who do they play Mahjong with? I'm like, what? That these are the triggers that are gonna get them to think about the people I wanna have conversations with. Yeah. That, now I, we really, we were taught that, right?

Tom Jackobs 16:23

That's funny.

LinkedIn Introductions That Convert

Brynne Tillman 16:24

but now the moment, the shift, like the transition, how did I get here? Is when I saw LinkedIn for the first time, and by the way, I called it, link it in for weeks. When I saw LinkedIn for the first time, it solved this problem because I could identify who my client knew that I wanted to meet. And instead of saying, Hey, Joe, or Hey Jacob, who do you know? I could use my services the same way I say, Jacob, you are connected to so many folks I'd love to have a conversation with. Do you mind if I run these names by you and get your thoughts?

Tom Jackobs 16:55

Nice.

Brynne Tillman 16:56

And now, and it may trigger other people not on that list, but maybe there's this list of 72 people and at the end of our conversation. You've identified four or five you're willing to make an introduction to, or one or two that you're willing to make an introduction to. And then I say, thank you so much of these others. Would it be okay if I mention that you're my happy client and that you know that we had this conversation today? Sure. So now I have some introductions. And 35 other names that I can name drop. So I reach out and I say, Hey Joe, Jacob and I were chatting the other day. Your name came up in conversation. He says, hello, I've been working with Jacob on X, Y, and Z. Let's connect and I can loop you in why he thought we should chat. And so you're coming in with a high level of credibility, a high level of trust, but. There's a but your only goal is to have Joe go back to Jacob and say, man, thanks for introducing you to Brynne. That was a great call. If it bring, bring value, so now your question though was how do I convert? So here, if you have a good enough conversation, you have to ask them questions in order to bring insights, right? Otherwise, it's a blog post on Zoom, right? If it's just a generic, like pushing insights and they could have learned it from watching your YouTube live, it's not, that's not the value. We need to understand their situation in order to deliver value. So there is an obligation to do some discovery. That discovery just needs to be challenge, history, impact, risk and priority. Did I do that right? Yes.

Tom Jackobs 18:31

Yeah.

Permission-Based Next Steps

Brynne Tillman 18:32

I'm at risk. Oh yeah, sure. I have, this is why I have acronyms. You have an obligation to make sure that half hour you're spending with them is time well spent for them. That they get off that call and go, man, that was a great use of my time. So when we set it up, I'm gonna go back to, I'm just reiterating what we talked about before when we scheduled this call. Other than that, Jacob said we should chat. Was there anything you were hoping we'd cover? Because they may have done some due diligence. They may looked at my profile, my website before the call. They may have a question or two. I still wanna know. So other than Jacob saying We should chat, what would you like to cover? So I start with that. Sometimes it's nothing. Sometimes they wrote it in the calendar invite.'cause there's a place. What would you like us to cover on the call sometimes, so I have to make sure I did that and I did my pre call planning. And then the next thing is, I want you to walk away from this call with some value and insights. That's my goal, if there is something I can help you with, great. If there's someone I can introduce you to that can help you, great. But if nothing else, I want you to walk away from this 30 minutes saying, Hey, that was the best time I spent this week. That's the expectation I'm setting. I have to meet that expectation. So for 29 minutes, maybe 27 minutes, I'm learning about them and in real time, giving my thoughts and insights. And then at the end, and I have three stories I use almost all the time. You've gotta be prepared. Just say, Joe listening to this reminds me of a client that I worked with last year. Can I tell you that story?

Tom Jackobs 20:03

Yeah.

Brynne Tillman 20:03

Permission to shift?

Tom Jackobs 20:06

Yep.

Brynne Tillman 20:06

Don't just tell the story, ask permission, because when he says, oh yeah, sure, I'd love to hear that. He'll listen. If you just go into storytelling, you have now bait and switched him.

Tom Jackobs 20:18

Yep.

Brynne Tillman 20:18

I tell the story and say, I don't know where you are in this journey, but if you'd like to explore a little bit more about how I helped that client and see if that would be helpful to you, we can set up another call. Oh, okay. Sure. And now, because I've done my pre-call planning. I know there are two other people in the organization I'd love to include in that meeting. So I'll say, when I was doing a little research before our call today, I noticed Fran and Jane are doing this. Typically they, you know, that role gets involved in that conversation. Do you have access to their calendar? Can we include them?

Tom Jackobs 20:55

Yeah. Nice.

Brynne Tillman 20:56

And now we've moved this forward and we've shifted it with permission and our next call becomes really the first sales call.

Tom Jackobs 21:04

Yeah. And I love that it's still the BANT, but it's completely different. You're, You're still well, you didn't do budget on that one, but you the authority, so you know the people. But it's so much more elegant than starting the conversation with budget authority and down the road.

Brynne Tillman 21:22

Yes, I'll clarify. You still need band, just not at the beginning.

Tom Jackobs 21:26

Yeah. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman 21:27

You have to earn the right to talk about BANT. You can't go to BANT. May have done timing a little bit, but we did it in relation to their situation.

Resources and Closing

Tom Jackobs 21:40

Yeah. And in, in helping them overcome whatever the challenge is too. Yeah. Love that. Brynne, this has just been um, the nuggets that you've dropped, and I hope the listeners are taking notes here as well. Maybe they need to listen to this again, and again a couple times. But the nuggets that you've dropped have been absolutely gold, so thank you so much for doing that. How can people learn more about you and your work, and especially the LinkedIn work that you're doing?

Brynne Tillman 22:05

Thank you, I appreciate that. First we have a free membership and we have a premium, but anyone can join for free. That gets you one coaching call a month. Two to three trainings a month all free because my goal is to earn your business. But we have, I'll tell you, we have over 12,000 free members.

Tom Jackobs 22:23

Wow.

Brynne Tillman 22:23

And there's no pressure. And then we have about 125 premium members.

Tom Jackobs 22:29

Nice.

Brynne Tillman 22:30

So we're serving a lot of people for free, but when the timing is right, they're like, oh we'll pay$97 a month. You've earned that. Oh, great. Welcome aboard. We're thrilled to have you. So membership, it's socialsaleslink.com/membership. Join for free. There's no reason not to. You can always unsubscribe, right? You can always back out. But if you found value in this, you'll get so much value from, there are hundreds of resources in our library, lots of on demand training, lots of things. Um. I also launch brynne.ai, B-R-Y-N-N-E.AI, which is my AI coach through a partnership with a company called myfuel.io. And you can have seven days. It's like BRYChatGPT, you can ask me. It's my bank of knowledge. Anything you want for something is for free. No credit card required for any of the free.

Tom Jackobs 23:26

Even better. Now,

Brynne Tillman 23:28

Mm-hmm.

Tom Jackobs 23:28

we'll link all that up into the show notes and make sure that everybody's going to that and make it easy. And actually I think I'm gonna have my my assistant who handles the LinkedIn get into that group as well. So Brynne, this has been uh, again, fascinating and a great conversation. I really wanna thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom with the audience.

Brynne Tillman 23:48

And thank you for coming on my show and sharing your wisdom with my audience.

Tom Jackobs 23:52

Awesome. Sharing is caring, right? That's what my mom says, so

Brynne Tillman 23:57

Oh, moms are always right'cause I'm one.

Tom Jackobs 24:00

Yes always. And thank you listeners for tuning into today's episode. We really do appreciate it. Make sure that you're checking out everything that Brynne's doing, and we're gonna link all of that up into the show notes. And then while you're down there, there's probably gonna be a place where you can share this episode. I encourage you to share the episode with a friend or a family member or a colleague that could use some of the advice that Brynne has shared with us today. It really helps share the show and gets more people interested in being heart-led rather than profit led. So until next time, lead with your heart.

Speaker 2 24:34

You've been listening to The Heart-Led Business Show, hosted by Tom Jackobs. Join us next time for another inspiring journey into the heart of business.