Phil Gerbyshak is a sales speaker, sales expert, sales trainer, and sales coach. Phil trains teams on the power of connection and how to best leverage the reach of social media, combined with the deeply personal work of nurturing 1-to-1 relationships, to grow profitable, long-term clients, transforming business, and boosting revenue. People matter – and they don’t scale.

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You can pick up so much information, but you really need to also drop off some value. Share on X

When someone says something nice to you, you should say thank you, and that applies online as well. Share on X

Add value before you add volume. Share on X

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It's nice to get money, but it's even better to make a difference. Share on X

Phil Gerbyshak knows SALES. He’s a sales speaker, a sales expert, a sales trainer, a sales leader mentor, a sales podcaster and a sales coach. He's written 5 books, more than 3000 articles, and has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Daily Globe and Mail, Financial Times, Investor's Business Daily, Inc. and many other publications, including earning 3 covers: Speaker Magazine, Marketing Media and Money, and Social Selling Made Easy. Phil is known as a Sales, Social Selling and Technology Authority with a particular expertise in inside sales, LinkedIn and social selling.

While my orange glasses are my favorite, I love all brightly colored spectacles. I've got 19 pairs of glasses. Yes, they're all prescription (really)! I change the colors depending on the day.

When I’m not working, you can find me playing pinball (my favorite pinball machine is Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball), hanging out at t-ball, or I’m learning from someone how to add more value to the world by reading a new book and then likely interviewing the author of that book on my podcast Conversations with Phil Gerbyshak, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Email me any time at phil@philgerbyshak.com or call/text me at 414-640-7445. Mention my orange glasses, pinball or anything else you found interesting about my profile.

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I am looking forward to sharing another amazing industry expert with you. I am excited about who I have with me because I love him and everything about him. He is so smart, generous, and knows how to utilize networking and social media, how to make money at it all, and be able to do it in a way that you absolutely think, “This guy has got it going on.” He has also been a cover of our Marketing, Media & Money Magazine, not only that but he also holds the record for the most downloaded copies of the magazine. You are going to want to make sure you go check out his issue too.

Let me tell you a little bit about him. Phil Gerbyshak is a sales speaker, sales expert, sales trainer, and sales coach. He trains teams on the power of connection and how to best leverage the reach of social media combined with the deeply personal work of nurturing one-to-one relationships to grow profitable long-term clients, transforming business, and boosting revenue. People matter, and they don’t scale. Thank you so much, Phil, for being here with me and sharing your zone of genius.

It is my pleasure. Thank you so much, Patty, for all your good words. I so appreciate you.

Let’s dive right in and talk about social media real quick. Social media has only been around for however long it has been around but you are doing it well. There are only so many people, in my opinion, that get it right. By that, I mean, get it right, and they know how to social sell, nurture relationships, and social etiquette. You nail it in every single one of those. Tell us a little bit about that journey and where you were already doing that before you were doing it socially, and it transferred over. Tell us about that and your background.

Learning To Share

I am a lifelong learner. I love to learn but I did not always love to share. That is important. I had always read a ton of books back before there were podcasts and TED Talks but I never shared them. I thought that my job was to get smart. My buddy, Kirk Weisler, I heard speak. I did a program for an association that I was part of. He said, “It is great that you are picking up so much information but you need to drop off some value.” I thought about that. I started doing presentations. That is one of the reasons why I am a speaker and trainer because, “You’ve got to give back.”

In 2004 or 2005, I started using LinkedIn. It started making sense that I would share information. You share information, thoughts, links, and whatever content we have. At the time, you could share a link but there was no preview, thumbnail or anything. You had to get people going to get them going there. One of the keys and this is something that I realized early on, is that it is not about how smart I am. It is about how smart my network is, and the people around me are.

I realized that when I share stuff, I should give people credit for sharing that. That sounds obvious now but that wasn’t always obvious before. Now it’s even more important because when I share your work, and I tag you, your network knows. The network effect is big. This is super important. Folks miss this. They go spammy. They tag 50 people in every post and hope that it is going to blow up. I do not think I always did that, Patty, but when I realized that it wasn’t so much about how much I could put in my head but how much I could share, my life changed, and I have Kirk to thank for that.

I was talking about that when I had a training, and somebody in my training was saying to me, “Patty, I love the way you do the follow Friday things that you do and when you shout me out as a local leader. I love the way you do it.” I said, “That is great but would you like a tip?” He said, “Sure.” I said, “It is great that you like it but it would help you a little more if you retweeted and shared it.” He is like, “Is that what I am supposed to do?”

It was funny. He was like, “I did not know.” I said, “Let me tell you what that does for you. It is not just that you are doing something for me. This is how it works for you and across all social media platforms.” He looked super surprised. He had no idea. Everybody else in training came up to me after and said, “Patty, that was a good tip.” I couldn’t believe how many people did not realize that if somebody shouts you out that you should share it and then say something about it. It cracked me up.

Interestingly, you couldn’t believe it because that is one of the things most people don’t get or understand when I train or coach. They think I am bragging. Here’s the thing. It is not bragging if it is true. If you shout me out, Patty, I need to share that with my folks because, frankly, the proof coming from you is far bigger than the proof coming from me. Folks need to remember that. Not only that but it is gracious. If you say something nice, I should say, “Thank you.” That is obvious and a real conversation because people don’t translate that online. They think that’s not “real conversation.”

Real conversation is everywhere. It could be a handwritten letter from my grandmother, a tweet on Twitter, a post on LinkedIn or a video. It doesn’t matter. Whatever that conversation is, you need to be present, be gracious about it and share it because that is social proof from someone else far greater than yours. It is the right thing to do. It is polite. I want to encourage folks. That is a fundamental conversation piece. For me, if someone says nice things, I am going to say, “Thank you.” I want to encourage you to bring that back online. It is okay to share it and tag, “Hey, @PattyFarmer, thank you so much for the nice words that you said.”

It is simple because then, A) Your followers get to see the nice thing what Patty said and, B) Patty feels loved because then I mentioned her, and she sees that. I want to encourage you, folks. If you are reading this and you are like, “I do not want to brag about myself,” do good work and when people do brag about you, make sure you share it.

It is something pretty basic. More times than people would want to admit, they get caught up in social media versus social networking. I am always trying to explain to people that media is broadcasting out but it is social networking. You need to think about, “What would I do if this was in person and really translate that over.” That is how you move your relationships online and offline. Sometimes they don’t get it. What would you say is the number one social media etiquette mistake that people make?

Being Personal

They personalize instead of being personal. They say, “Dear Patty,” and then there’s nothing about you in the message. I’ve got one of these. I’ve got a speaker because I am a VP of Sales Training in addition to speaking, training, and coaching. When you search LinkedIn, I show up as a VP of Sales because the training ends up getting truncated.

I don’t know, and I don’t care why LinkedIn does that but it is true. I get some speaker who works with salespeople, who had his assistant go out and blast the same message to every VP of Sales out there. I do not hire speakers but this is what he sends, “Hey, this is Johnny, Sally’s assistant. Here is some spammy, crappy message. You should hire me as a speaker.”

Sales Principles: Sharing is not about how smart you are, it's about how smart your network is and how smart the people around you are. So when you share things, you should give people credit for sharing.

That was personalized. It said, “Dear Phil,” but that is not enough. You have got to be personal. Take the time. Look at people’s profiles and see, “He is a VP of Sales Training but he is also a speaker. He also knows sales, and I don’t hire people like that.” If you have paid attention and have been personal, instead, an approach might have been, “Phil, I see that you are VP of Sales Training. Do you ever augment the training that you deliver with an outside speaker? I have experience augmenting sales training, and here is how.”

I was personal, and then in the PS, I might add, “PS Phil, I love your orange glasses. They are fun. Nobody wears orange glasses as you do.” He was personal instead of personalizing. That is the biggest miss and social media etiquette faux pas that so many people make. It is a killer for sales because people get way too many messages that look exactly like what somebody would send everybody else, just with their name replaced.

You were offering a LinkedIn for speaker course. I took that course, and I have to tell you, hands down, the best money I ever spent. I am good at social. You taught some super key things there that have helped me to get more speaking gigs and better ones too and make more money. Not only that but one of the things that you said that should be pretty obvious but has helped is when you were saying in our headlines that we should put something personal. I remember at that time, yours said, “Pinball Wizard.” I remember thinking, “Why does Phil put that there?” When you explained it in the course, it made much sense to me.

Since then, there are things that I am known, for everybody knows about me, I added those and all of a sudden, people who are looking, it differentiates you from everybody else that does what you do and makes it a little bit more personal. That teeny little tip among all the golden nuggets that you gave was a game-changer, not just in how people reacted to me but in how I look for other people too when I am looking. That is good. Are you still doing that course? You are still doing something like it. Tell us about that.

The LinkedIn Sales Blueprint I am offering for sales, consultants, thought leaders, and trainers is a recorded course. I do not have time anymore to do it live but I have it as a recorded course. It is five sessions. There are lots of little things and nuances that will help grow the business. That one tip that you have there, “Change your headline to be something personal,” is so important because if we think about it, “How many of us are speakers?” We raised our hands. Putting that you are a keynote speaker doesn’t help you stand out. You look like every other one.

Give me something personal. Remember orange glasses and pinball wizard. Whatever it is that is personal about you, offer that because that’s what people are going to remember, not, “Phil is a keynote speaker.” Nobody cares because that’s the same as everybody else. I am not saying you do not have that as a position but my first thing is my headline, which is super important to do.

Let’s go back a little bit further and talk about your journey. I remember one of the things that I loved when we interviewed you for the magazine was that you came from this teeny little town. It was our headline that you came from this town of some small number to these many connections. It was fabulous. I thought, “That’s impressive.” I was raised in Las Vegas, so it was big but with that said, your story inspired me and said a lot about you. Let’s go back and tell your story.

Power Of The Internet

I grew up in a little town of 996 people called Crivitz, Wisconsin. Growing up, we didn’t even have a stoplight. There was a feed mill, no McDonald’s or any fast food. It was super small. I graduated from a class of 50 people. I was even told in eighth grade that I should take easy math because, frankly, I was going to end up working at the gas station my whole life. My mom was a waitress making $1.61 an hour. My dad was a dairy farmer and never filed a positive tax return in his life. My stepdad worked at a homeowners bargain outlet like Home Depot, taking three levels down with all the rejects and things that are no good.

That is where I grew up. From there, I went into the Navy and delivered the email by hand. I thought the internet was fake. I had none of the traditional advantages of anybody. Out of 996 people, many of which are service professionals that have never moved more than 60 to 70 miles away because some move all the way to Green Bay, Wisconsin or Iron Mountain, Michigan. That is their sphere of influence but I learned early on, both from my grandmother, my dad, and my mom, how important the people were.

When I went into the Navy, I ignored that advice. I didn’t listen to them and made more enemies than friends, if I am going to be honest. I am surprised anybody that I was stationed with the Navy still talks to me. I still got a couple of friends from there. I did that and went to college to be a teacher. That was fun. I learned the internet was becoming real. We are at 56,000. I had a computer and a printer in my office. I sweet-talked myself into being president of an association. That was a pretty big deal. I had a Hewlett-Packard 822C that the cartridges cost me $130 that the school paid for, for me to make copies. It was cool.

The internet started becoming real, and that was the game-changer for me. My life changed. I had a website dedicated to the 1980s. I was the ‘80s guy. That was what I thought I wanted to be. I started 80sCafe.com, which I do not own. Sadly, somebody else picked it up. I am sure they are doing good work with it. I did that and then realized that this internet thing was legit. I got a job selling DSL and started realizing that relationships were what mattered. I started deeply connecting. From there, life has changed.

That has been the way that I have built my business from the get-go. Networking, building relationships, and collaboration have been my key things. Phil, let me ask you a question. If somebody was a brand new entrepreneur or business owner, maybe they transitioned out of corporate and are thinking, “I’ve got to start getting seen and get some visibility,” what would be some key things you would tell them that they should be doing first?

How To Start?

First, add as much value as you can before you try to add any volume. That is the first and most important thing. How do you add value? It’s like what you are doing here, Patty. You might start a podcast, do an interview series via text, take other people’s articles and add comments to them. You might not even have a website yet, but you should add value before you add volume. That is the first important thing. The next thing is you should get your profile in shape. Your profile is everything about you online. It should be a consistent headshot and text.

It should look and sound like you and I would say, if you have the money, hire a writer to help you with that. It’s great that you write about yourself but it often feels like bragging. If you give it up to somebody else and they say good things, you can copy and paste it and not feel guilty about it. You do not feel like you are bragging. That is the second thing I do. The third thing I do is I added value. I call it, “Getting dressed before you get busy.” That is important.

From there, then I would go out and try to help as many people as I could and what I wanted to do. Eventually, I would get to a point where I could charge for it. You do not have to do anything for free at first. You might charge a low fee but I would rather give stuff away than charge a fee that is below what I feel I am worth because mentally, it is important to know what you are worth and get what you are worth.

Sales Principles: Change your headline to be something personal. People aren't going to remember "Keynote Speaker", that's like every other one. Give something personal because that's what people are going to remember.

It is easier to give it away because then I can still mentally say, “I am still worth X amount of dollars.” As opposed to, “That person offered me this.” Not to mention when they recommend you, they can say, “Phil only charged me $10 an hour.” I do not want to do work for $10 an hour. I would rather do it free and say, “You are a friend of Patty or because of whatever insert reason here.” I always have a reason, invoice, and let them know that you are waiving your fee. I always let them know why because it is never the same. “I might give you a discount because you are my friend, you are left-handed, tall, short, skinny or fat,” whatever I decide. It is up to me.

That way, when somebody else comes back and says, “We give to them,” I can honestly stand in integrity and say, “This is why.” Once you have a bit of an audience, then you start making some offers. That does not mean that you are not making any money upfront. I want to be clear. You can still add value but as you are building this online presence, some of that stuff online might be all for case studies, testimonials, and things to know what works and to see which audience it resonates with. Most of us have 2 or 3 natural audiences and 2 or 3 adjacent audiences that we could do business with. It is important to do that.

The last thing is to embrace your weirdness. You got to embrace what is different about you, not just talk about it. That takes a long time. My buddy, Steve Farber, years ago, when I asked him how to be a great speaker, he said, “Gerbyshak, I’ve got three words. Be more you.” It changed my life but then he gave me the three final words that have resonated, and I do still. That is, “Practice, practice, practice.”

Be you often, as often as you can. You will find out that, that way, you do not have to feel forced because you are comfortable in your skin. The first time you do it, you are like, “Nobody likes me. Nobody commented or shared it. What am I doing wrong?” “Nothing. Nobody knows you yet. You are in a closet. That’s okay.” Be you more often.

When I first stepped out into that, one of the things that I couldn’t figure out was that I was hearing all the time, “Patty, you are so brilliant or this and that,” but then I noticed that they weren’t always hiring me. When I started speaking, I realized that when I would ask if anybody had any questions, very rarely did anybody ever have any questions.

I was thinking, “If everybody thinks I am so brilliant, why is nobody asking me any questions?” It took me a little while for me to figure out that sometimes you can give too much information. You can overwhelm them. They weren’t asking questions because I had already given them so much that they did not have any more questions or a capacity for any more information.

I had to learn how to temper that information as well and realize that when you serve, not sell, it allows you to be able to do that. I believe you should give away some of your best stuff. That is what brings people to you too. It is a skill that you learn along the way. For me, it took me longer than I should have to look back but that’s how it is. With that said, what is the lesson that took you the longest to learn?

Embracing Yourself

The one about embracing who I am was the hardest. I still have days where that is hard. What I mean by that is understanding that it doesn’t matter what everybody thinks about me. It does only matter, “Does that resonate with my audience or who I want to talk with most?” It’s okay to be yourself. Being more you is super important unless you are a jerk. In which case, you should look at that again. That doesn’t give you permission to be mean to people. To be clear, that’s not what I am talking about but letting your personality, energy, colorfulness or lack of colorfulness shine through was the hardest one for me. Often, we look to people before us as role models instead of guides.

I was guilty of this. I looked at John Maxwell, Marcus Buckingham, Tim Sanders, and Farber and I was like, “I want to be like them.” They could not be four more different people. John Maxwell is a preacher from Skyline Church in San Diego. I am not a preacher, so that is out. Marcus Buckingham is this drop-dead gorgeous Englishman. I am not that. I do not wear my shirt unbuttoned and show off my chest in my program. He is out. Tim Sanders in Love Is the Killer App, dressed up like a beatnik from the ‘60s and ‘70s. He had on a leather jacket and cool shades. I am not Tim Sanders. Farber, Farber is Farber. He has got his jam going there. I couldn’t be Farber either.

I’ve got disappointed with myself and it was like, “I am not those guys, so this doesn’t work.” I then finally realized that I have to be more me, and that is all I can be. I am the best Phil Gerbyshak on the planet. Once I finally embraced that wholly, I really got it but it was hard. There are still days when I want to fit and blend in, and then I realize that every time I say that, I am like, “You want to be like everybody else? Is that what you are saying?”

I do not think you could blend in. You are a standout kind of guy, Phil.

Thank you for saying that but that is the thing. We all have that opportunity to be standout guys and gals. We miss it because we compare ourselves. That comparison trap and being more me are the big lessons that I learned that I still have days where I am learning them.

Sometimes you have to fine-tune it too. When I was first learning that I thought, “What is that about me?” The people who know me know that I love shoes. A week doesn’t go by that people aren’t sending me shoes like pictures of shoes and saying, “I thought of you when I saw this.” In the beginning, they’ve got to know that about me but here is what would happen.

Sometimes when I would post about it, I would get haters. They would say, “How many pairs of shoes do you need?” I’ve got a lot of that. For a while there, I stopped doing it but then, all of a sudden, I realized that it was a shift and I started sharing why I love shoes and how this was a part of rewarding myself.

When I would set goals for myself, it was all about the goal. People resonated with that. Sometimes there is something about us and saying the thing, you can sometimes explain why you do it. That was the change for me being unapologetically me but also realizing that there is always a why behind most of the things that we do. Sometimes being vulnerable and authentic in sharing the why is a good thing too.

Context matters. I bet you do not even know that I am colorblind but not completely. I just want to be clear. In junior high school, my best friend’s sister was sitting on my lap. We were watching fireworks, and I was calling out the wrong colors for fireworks. I didn’t think about it. That was July 4th. Two weeks later, I attempted to join the Navy at the time. I found out that I am red and green shade blind. In the sky, often light purple looks like white to me. Often, dark purple looks like navy to me. Black often looks like navy. The navy looks black. Sometimes, green looks like gray or brown to me.

Sales Principles: Be you often. Be you, as often as you can online. That way you don't have to feel forced because you're just really comfortable in your own skin.

My pants almost match my glasses because I asked someone, not because I can see them. I cannot tell you. I am looking at them, and they look brown to me but I know because people have told me that they are olive green. When I wear my glasses, it is because I want to share a color that I have been deprived of. I am color deficient.

It is important to me to be able to share that. As a sales trainer and a sales speaker, I want to get people’s attention right from the jump. One of the ways to do that is usually my socks and cufflinks will match the same color as my glasses. It gets people’s attention, so right from the get-go they are paying attention. Those two reasons are why I have fifteen pairs of glasses.

Was the orange accidental you think it was another color or did you know it was orange right up front?

I knew it was orange but the first orange pair was accidental. I liked it. I thought it was cool but it wasn’t my favorite one. It was the green ones. These green ones that I am wearing were what I thought was going to be my color. I did a program, and the green completely washed out because they had an old bulb. My slides looked washed out and terrible. I am like, “Why is that?” It is because they are green, and green is one of the first colors to get depleted in a projector ball, at least in my experience. That might not be scientifically true. If anybody is reading this and says, “You are full of crap,” this is my experience.

I saw that and I was like, “What is my second favorite color?” My second favorite color was orange. I had a pair of orange glasses. I had an orange shirt, and I put them on. The feedback that I got was, “That is bright,” but they paid attention. For me, it was accidental but now, it is on purpose. My Apple Watch Band is orange. My phone case is orange. Even the thing that my laptop sits on top of, the holder, is orange as well. I don’t have an orange vehicle yet, but I got an orange bag. I am orange. That’s my whole thing. I love orange.

The reality is I do love that and that picture of you where you have the phone. I was like, “That was catchy with some good branding.” Phil, let’s go back to LinkedIn. I get asked this a lot, so I am sure you do too. Do you have to have the paid version? Talk about that because people ask me all the time, “Do I have to have the paid version to make sales or can I only connect on the free one?” I get a lot of questions about that. This is your area of expertise. Give us your perspective. I always love getting everybody else’s perspective.

What You Need To Know About LinkedIn

I don’t think you have to have the paid version. I want to be clear. Here’s the thing, though, if you are running up against the commercial search limit or if you are doing a ton of prospecting, you should get the paid version. Skip premium and go right to sales navigator because I am going to give you some ROI here. It is $80 a month for the navigator. That is the top price.

$80 a month times twelve months is $960. Let’s round that up to $1,000. If it saves you 2 hours a time a month, that is 24 hours a year, 24 hours a year divided into a $1,000, let’s shrink that down to 20 hours because maybe we take December to January off, so that is $50 an hour. If your time is billed at more than $50 an hour, you should get the paid version of LinkedIn.

With that being said, if you don’t know what you are doing, it is hard to use a sales navigator because it is very different. The differences that are there are not things that are immediately recognizable. One of the big differences is the fact that you can tag. I can use LinkedIn Sales Navigator like a CRM so that I can bucket people and get different views, almost like a Twitter list. It’s different but you have to know what you are doing and do that.

My recommendation is, whether you hire me as a coach or someone else as a coach, spend a couple of hours with someone who knows the navigator, and then sign up for a free month. Invest in a free month and two hours of coaching with someone, develop your strategy and go after it for 30 days. If you have already gotten your free month, pay for the $80. Do not sign up for a whole year yet but then go after it. Go after for 30 days or 90 days for 1 target audience. Make sure your profile is in shape, position yourself as the expert for that audience, and go after it.

If you don’t make your $1,000 back for the year and that $500 to $1,000 that you are paying someone for coaching, then either your coach sucks or you have the wrong audience, either way, you got good research. For $1,500, you did a year’s worth of market research that says either, “A) I hired the wrong coach. I will never hire that person again. They are not worth my time. I invested $1,500 to know who is not my person or, B) I learned who not my audience is,” either of which are valuable things to know.

That’s a good advice and some really great marketing math there. That works well. What do you think of the LinkedIn broadcasting application where people can apply to do that?

I love the fact that there is an application process for LinkedIn Live. I hope that not everybody gets LinkedIn Live. Not that everybody cannot get it but then everybody doesn’t get it by default because I don’t want somebody jumping on and navel-gazing like, “Hi, I am smart. You should talk to me. Here is my crappy product or service. Here is a live video that goes 30 minutes, and I suck. I am boring. I don’t add value but I am going to talk because LinkedIn says I got fifteen minutes to say whatever I want. I am going to read it from the phone book.”

I don’t ever want to see that. The application process is fantastic. I love that people have to apply. If you are thinking about LinkedIn Live, think about what is your unique take on sales, marketing, and leadership. How can you spin that into a show that runs for more than one episode? Not just, “How can I develop a standalone episode or video?” but, “How can I spin and craft this into something more long-lasting?” This is where you need the marketing help. If you are not a marketer and you don’t understand how to get a marketing strategy, you need one, so get someone.

The days of, “You’ve got video, therefore you stand out,” are not true anymore. You have to find your unique angle and what your weird is. That is important. If you do that and you have got a unique point of view, go after that and do this for 10, 12 or 25 episodes. It is way more interesting. That could be your point of view. It could be your audience.

Sales Principles: If you're thinking about LinkedIn Live, think about your unique take on sales, marketing, or leadership. And find out how you can spin that into something more long-lasting. You have to find your angle.

There are lots of different ways to slice and dice the uniqueness. Find something different about you than everybody else. Don’t do what everybody does. That’s where LinkedIn Live, the fact that they make you apply gives you a speed bump that says, “I got to think about why I am going to do this, not just because it is on the platform, which is going to lead to greater success.”

In the beginning, when people were early adopters of Facebook Live, they were there all the time. I find that I do not watch as many of them as I used to before. I am looking forward to LinkedIn Lives as well. You are everywhere. You have your visibility down. I am sure that is what everybody tells you. Here is what I want to know. How much time do you spend on social media?

Social Media Balancing

I spend at least an hour a day. If I am doing a video, an interview or something, then two hours a day on it. If I am doing a video, usually I block an hour for that, whether I am getting interviewed or joining the interview, 1 hour for other stuff, and then another 10 minutes of checking on stuff, seeing what is going on and if there is time. For instance, every day on my social media day, I start with gratitude. That is the first thing I do. I post that to Facebook and engage people in the conversation on my personal profile. Those are my friends, and people that I have met in person or I want to know in person.

You and I haven’t met in person yet but we are close enough that we might as well have. That’s how I try to behave on Facebook. That is my Facebook network. I spend a lot of time there. If I have value to add about sales, leadership, and marketing, I am going to go to LinkedIn and share that, and then a bit of Twitter in-between stuff, 30, 60, 90 seconds to pay attention and see who is talking about me. I might sprinkle in a little bit of value throughout the day. I don’t schedule unless I come across 5 or 10 articles in a row that are interesting. The reason I scheduled them is that if I puked out ten tweets in a row, you would be like, “Shut up. That is too much.” Instead, I will schedule them.

At most, 3 links, 4 links go out a day to articles that I found of interest, so 1 to 2 hours a day. On the weekends some cleanup, I am going to spend more time on Facebook and make sure that if it is people’s birthday, I am going to wish them a happy birthday as well. I try to do that. Facebook has decided to hide those birthdays from me on the mobile side, which is annoying. That means I have to go to the desktop and see them. Birthdays, adding value, my gratitude for the day, and then connecting with people are the 4 big things that I do about 1 hour or 2 a day.

People asked me that question too and I said, “About 45 minutes to 1 hour.” In the morning is when I do things. I set things up and clean things up too. Like you, during the day, I am checking on my phone and answering, engaging, having a conversation, replying to people, and recognizing the things that people say. That is important but if people do it right, they do not necessarily have to be on social media all day long. They think they do but the reality is they do not need to be there. One of the things that I learned early on is a lot of times, somebody will post something, and then you will get this engagement, and fifteen people will respond.

What people do is they go in there and answer all fifteen people at one time, “Thank you for,” whatever the case may be. Every post you have only has a certain amount of time limit. One of the things that I learned early on is if you have 15 people, you go check, and 15 people have left a comment. If you answer 5 of them, it shows up more. An hour later, if you go in and answer five more, it shows up. Not doing them all at one time helps you.

That is why I like going in throughout the whole day and doing it because this way, it extends the time. There are a lot of little things that people can do instead of getting on there once a day, putting everything out, and they forget about social media until the next day. There is more to it but it should be part of your overall marketing strategy and not just jump on, jump off. You spend the most amount of time on LinkedIn. You said Facebook and Twitter. Do you not do Instagram or Pinterest at all?

I play with Instagram. I am not very active on it. I do not use the full 30 hashtags. Seldom I do use hashtags. I like Instagram Stories. Now that Instagram has decided to hide likes and how many people have liked it, I don’t even care. I am trying to engage the audience that I have. I know that to get a new audience, I have to go and have more conversations.

I do not worry so much about what I post. It is more about the comments that I share. I do go look for people. I will take a few minutes. I have got a couple of corkboards on Pinterest. I have got a beach board because, in 2020, I will be living on Madeira Beach. I am building my beach house, 1 piece of furniture, and 1 sign on the wall at a time. That is what I use Pinterest for.

I can’t figure out how to get logged in to TikTok. It appears that both of my typical usernames, Phil Gerb and Phil Gerbyshak, are gone. I might have to use LISBP for my LinkedIn Sales Blueprint or something else to be on TikTok. I bet I took my two usernames but I cannot get the password reset. That is not helpful. In order of usage, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, LinkedIn, top three, then Facebook, a little bit of Twitter, and Instagram.

For me, I love Twitter. I have always spent time on LinkedIn but I do have to say that I have, maybe not quite doubled my time but at least one and a half times since I took your course. I have a renewed interest in Pinterest. It has been doing well for me but I do think that it all depends. You do not have to be everywhere. It’s where your audience is. Let me ask this question. What do you love most about your business?

I love that I get to choose who I work with. I do not have to work with everyone. When I was starting, I did not exactly know who my target was. I took on some clients that I wouldn’t take on anymore. I love that about them. I love that I know that I can help the people that I serve. Starting, I might be able to, to I think I can, to I know I can, to now, there is no question in my mind. If somebody does the work that I teach, it will work. I want to weed that out. I don’t want to work with people who are not going to do the work.

Most of my business is a referral business. It is from people who have worked with me who loved the results that they’ve got from working with me. That is super important. I don’t worry about SEO anymore. I don’t want some random person to find me because they found that my LinkedIn Sales Blueprint course is at XYZ price and is super cheap. I do not want anybody like that. They can buy my product but I would rather they not because they are not going to do the work. They are just going to sit on the product. It is nice to get money but it is better to make a difference.

I believe leading with contribution and compensation will follow. I understand that. How do people connect with you?

What Dog Am I?: A unique personality assessment guide that fuels your performance in business and life

You can find me on LinkedIn. It is @PhilGerbyshak. If you search for @PhilGerb on much every platform except for TikTok, that is my username. You can find me there. If you go to PhilGerbyshak.com, you will see my phone number and email address there. I am happy to do that. I am VP of Sales Training at Vector Solutions in Tampa. If you ever get to Tampa, let me know. I would love to grab a cup of coffee or have lunch with you. We are on the corner of Westshore and Kennedy in Tampa. If you are not in Tampa, it doesn’t mean anything to you but if you are in Tampa, write where that is. It is right by WestShore Mall. I would love to hear from folks.

Thank you so much. We are at the portion of the show, which I love. It is one of my favorites, and this is my version of social karaoke. This is the open mic portion, where our guests get to share their secret sauce, ninja strategy or the most valuable thing they can share with the audience. I am going to turn it over to you, Phil. Take it away.

The 5 Ps Of Sales

I am going to teach you about the way that you need to sell, which is the 5 Ps of Sales. I’ll start in the middle, and then I promise I will cover off on the ends. The first P is you have to Prepare like your messaging, who you are going to talk to, and what value you are going to give them. Get that ready, next to you, queued up, and have that at the ready. You got to Practice having conversations.

Maybe you talk to Zoom, practice them as phone calls or record them. If you use the Zoom webinar product or you store Zoom in the cloud, it automatically transcribes. If not, you can download the Otter.ai. That is my secret weapon for all my sales folks, everybody that I coach and train. It allows you to record and then rehear that as well as see the transcripts. That is your practice piece.

You got to Produce. Do the work. Do not get paralyzed by the fact, “I am not ready enough.” If you are prepared and you practiced, you can produce but there are two more Ps that are important. That is, in the front end, you have to Prioritize. Write down everything that you have to do in the day. The most valuable things, those things that move your needle that are the best revenue-producing activities, need to go on your calendar.

In addition to that, you’ve got to prepare time and put review time on your calendar. It is important. One other thing that goes in your calendar is random tasks. What happens is those random tasks take us off track. They paralyze us because we are like, “I’ve got to do this.” Stop. If, instead, you put an hour on your calendar every day for random tasks, and every time you get a random task, you know, “I don’t have to do that now. I am going to do that at 3:00 PM at random task time,” you are going to be way better.

The last P is the one that so many people miss. That is Perfect. Improve, get better, do more, continue that. If we put that together, first, we prioritize, “What are the most important things that are on my calendar? I am going to do those every single day. I am then going to prepare my list, messaging, and who I am going to talk to, and then I practice. I get good. I practiced enough then I produced. I make the calls, do the presentations, write the blog posts and do the podcasts, whatever the product is. The last but not least, I perfect them, always improving.” It is a beautiful, virtuous cycle. The more you do that, the more successful you are going to be.

Thank you so much for sharing your zone of genius. I always love talking with you because I always learn something every single time, which is fabulous. One more time, can you give them the website for your course?

It is LISBP.com. That is for LinkedIn Sales Blueprint. It will take you to the course. If you have questions about LinkedIn, hop in there.

Thank you so much. Everyone, if you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe, and review this show on your favorite platform. Remember, sharing is caring. I look forward to seeing you again on the next episode. Thank you again, Phil.

My pleasure.