1607 – Do’s and Don’t’s of Selling on Social Media with Shannon DeSouza

Josh (00:00:05) - Hey, their thoughtful listener. Would you like consistent and predictable sales activity with no spam and no ads? I'll teach you step by step how to do this, particularly if you're an agency owner, consultant coach, or B2B service provider. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create more than 10 million in revenue. Just head to up my influence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. You can even chat with me live and I'll see and reply to your messages. Also, don't forget, the Thoughtful Entrepreneur is always looking for guests. Go to up my influence.com and click on podcast. We'd love to have you with us right now. Shannon, Shannon DeSouza Shannon, you are a sales coach and a fractional c r o you're found on the web@shannondesouza.com. Shannon, it's a pleasure having you.

Shannon (00:01:11) - I am so happy to be here. Thank you so much, Josh, for having me.

Josh (00:01:14) - Yeah, absolutely. And I, I know, thank you so much for doing the interview. I know that you were, you said you were feeling a little under the weather, so we might be at like 90% Shannon as opposed to a hundred percent, something like that. I'll

Shannon (00:01:25) - Do my best to ramp it up. .

Josh (00:01:27) - All right, . Well, yeah. Give us an overview of what you do as a, as a fractional, by the way, I love fractional c r o can be a game changer but I'll have you kind of talk about what you do.

Shannon (00:01:40) - So my clients, um, if they hire me as a sales coach, I'm basically you know, revenue officer in their back pocket. I'm teaching them the ways of the internet. Typically, that's what they wanna know is the online space and how to build a funnel and how to get predictable revenue.How are they getting consistent clients? That's what they really care about. A lot of people will come to me cuz they're stuck in referral land. Or they can get one or two clients here or there. They don't have a sales process. If I go into the corporate space, essentially what we're looking at is many broken funnels, problems with teams, issues with like prospecting, issues with lead generation, issues with closing. So there's a little bit more complexity that we will look at because, a corporation has a lot more moving pieces. Mm-hmm.

Josh (00:02:29) - . Yeah. well, I think we are all aware of. Well, let me just ask you, let me not lead the witness here. Okay, what are some ineffective ways that you see people using social media to sell and you're like, Ugh, please stop doing that. It's so annoying. Like, what do you see out there that you're like, yeah, don't do that. It doesn't work.

Shannon (00:02:52) - So the first thing I would say is not using organic properly. So a lot of people just show up to sell. That's all they wanna do. And

Josh (00:03:00) - I see that, that's annoying. I like even like on Facebook and it's like, that's all they're doing. And of course I unfollow them and hide it and stuff. I don't wanna be sold out all the time on Facebook. There's no value. I'm sorry I interrupt. Completely interrupted you, but you got me going. She,

Shannon (00:03:18) - No, you're absolutely

Josh (00:03:19) - Correct. And it's like when they do that, here's, I mean, let's let's ask our listener. How does that come across to you? To me, it just feels desperate. And it's like, you know, it's like the old school days of like amateur MLMers who have to like sell to their family and friends constantly. And it's just like, makes people go, ick, I'm sorry.

Shannon (00:03:41) - It just tells me they don't know how to use the internet. That's all it is a signal for. And to me, like that's an opportunity, that is an opportunity to learn how to grow your audience, how to speak to your audience, how to humanize yourself. Because at the end of the day, people do business with people they like.

Josh (00:03:58) - It's true. Okay. So what kind of content would you recommend then? What is working well? So we're ta what we're talking about is sharing. So we're talking about the content that you're sharing on social.

Shannon (00:04:09) - Absolutely. So I teach a five pillar content strategy. So the first of course we already got sales, but then I also teach character. So character is like, who is Shannon? Who is Josh? Like, what are we doing in our lives? Are we on vacation? Do we have a family? Like, you know, are we traveling? Where do, are we moving? Whatever that may be. So that is like the typical way to use Facebook, right? Especially your personal profile. The second, the third way would be affinity. And affinity is something a lot of people have never heard about. Affinity is another word for trust. And this is really around storytelling of how we may have experienced a transformation, how our client may have experienced a transformation, why we understand what our ideal client or prospect is really going through. This is what really warms up an audience.

Shannon (00:04:58) - This is what gets people excited, wanting to buy in the dms. And this is one of the pieces that a lot of folks don't even know. Of course we have values that's gonna be number four. And this is what traditionally you saw everything on the internet around value. Lemme teach you this. Yeah. Five hacks, two, three ways, three tips, right? It was just kind of everywhere. So you had this big confusion over who should I even listen to? And then there was this piece of like, I'm so overwhelmed with all this information, I just don't even wanna learn anymore. And then the last one is authority and authority is tooting your own horn. Learning to be seen talking about why you are the expert in what you do and why you should be hired. And then that could be be coupled with then that sales post. So do you see how I've like humanized myself from all different aspects?

Josh (00:05:49) - Yeah. And I think, you know, something that I would say, you know, and kind of what I'm getting from you here is, you know, underlining this is, you're not fooling anybody if you're doing it cuz you need the sales. We kind of know that. But I think that if you're doing it, it's like, listen, my first objective is I truly just want to bring value. Like I wanna help some other people here. I think that that is more attractive than I don't know. What, what's your opinion on, you know, like kind of putting a, I don't wanna say putting a bow on it, but kind of going for the jug year a little bit when you, like, let's say you share a bunch of conf a bunch of, you know, value, right? You share a great story or some insights or you know, some things that you've learned or just discovered, or you know, you did a study, you know, that that's like, that stuff's really interesting. I like that.And then sometimes like, so if you want me to, you know, DM you the report or whatever, give me a what, what in the comments or something like that. It's like, you kind of ruined it. I don't know. Like, what, but where do you, what do you recommend? So do you go,

Shannon (00:06:53) - Because I'm in sales, I will never say like, don't sell. Like, if you feel comfortable with that, go ahead and do it and you'll be surprised at how many people would be interested. It's all in how you position it. Yeah. Right. So there's a big, big fear online of being salesy. So you'll get the people who all they do is just like toss their selling out. Yeah. And then you get the people who don't sell at all. And these are typically the people who come to me where they can't understand why they're not making money online. And it's like, well, let's look at what you're doing. All you're doing is like trying to educate them on it and be their friend and get all these comments. Mm-hmm. But engagement doesn't convert to sales.

Josh (00:07:37) - That's true. That's true. Right. And, and admittedly so, Shannon, I'm probably overly concerned about it. So that that's my own, you know, personality that's creeping in.

Shannon (00:07:49) - Well, I, I mean, what I would love to see in the world is women especially, and men be empowered to feel like, you know, they have their right in taking up space to share how they're helping and serving. Because when we sell, that's exactly what we're doing. We're solving a problem, right? And so if you're coming from it, from that perspective and that energy, there will be people who are attracted. And especially if you're talking about more than just selling, right? You're talking about your family, you're talking about your travels, you're talking about how you change your client's life and then you're going in for asking for the sale.

Josh (00:08:23) - Yeah. And how do you, Shannon, like what does it look like when you work with people? Like do you, what's that journey?

Shannon (00:08:32) - Absolutely. So if I'm on the entrepreneur side, essentially what that looks like is it is a hybrid program. It's six months, it's one-to-one and group. I truly believe in the power of community and bringing people together so they don't feel alone and learning from each other. But there is such deep transformation that happens in one-to-one. And so I truly, truly enjoy that. Typically when I'm working in corporations, they have me on some sort of program or project. And then it really is like, what's the problem? Let's get to the transformation, whatever we need to do to get to that transformation.

Josh (00:09:07) - Yeah. And then do you, are you, do you provide e-learning? Are you cons coaching and consulting with it? Tell me more about the structure of the program.

Shannon (00:09:16) - Absolutely. So there is a prerecorded program, which I'm really excited about to do like a 2.0 of that. That's my like summer project is upleveling it, upgrading it, there's a lot of scripts and worksheets and short videos because I truly believe nobody has time to watch, you know, hundreds of hours of videos nowadays. Everyone kind of wants to get the information that they need and go. But I'm also teaching in the sessions that I'm doing in group as well. So, we'll start with like our wins, then we'll go into like, you know, here's the theme and I'll do a really short training and then it opens up to something that where they have to integrate and ask me questions, and then they can bring me whatever problems are going on in their business right now.

Josh (00:10:00) - Yeah. And then what, what's your background? Like, why are you qualified to teach on this ?

Shannon (00:10:05) - That is a great question. So I spent 10 years in the software industry. Yeah. And so I grew from a sales rep all the way to VP in sales and marketing. And I grew teams and I, like the biggest deal I've ever closed is 1.4 million. So I've been on the ground. That was

Josh (00:10:21) - A good day.

Shannon (00:10:22) - .

Josh (00:10:24) - Hope you celebrated after that one landing, that one.

Shannon (00:10:27) - Absolutely. I mean, that sales cycle was very long. Yeah. Enterprise deals are very, very long. So, I did it in corporate. I did it in software. Software is probably one of the fast, the fastest in my opinion, moving industry. And then when I moved across the country, I decided instead of, you know, going to work for someone, I would be a consultant. And that consultancy turned into an agency and that agency of seeing over 350 customers turned into holy crap, people need, don't know how to sell. People need help selling. And so I decided to like open that door up to them.

Josh (00:11:03) - Yeah. Well congrats on that. Do you see, obviously, you know, you have your ears to track on everything that's going on in your world. What applications of AI or chat G P T are you seeing that like, oh yeah, this can really help?

Shannon (00:11:18) - Oh my God, I am very excited about ai. What I am working on in the agency is actually using AI as a platform to be able to train my own methodology on top of it. So right now, chat, G b T, it's a bag of tricks. You don't know what you're gonna get. You have to be very specific. It's not trained with how we're training our clients for like, best practices for how to write an email or best practices to follow up, whatever that may be. Hmm. So I think that truly is the future of AI to be able to train, train it like it's our own puppy, you know, like mm-hmm. in our, in the own way that we wanna be able to use it.

Josh (00:11:53) - Mm-hmm. . Yeah. The sorcery is in the pre prompts, you know, it's like, okay, I'm gonna, you know, and then you just like talk to it and just like, okay, let me give you, let me give you the download on who I am, what I do, like what I want you, you know, and like, so interesting. Don't do it yet. Just let me know that you understand. You know, you're just like, you can spend, you know, an hour, you know, informing it all in that one prompt or you know, that one conversation mm-hmm. to get it. And it's amazing what a difference that will make. So

Shannon (00:12:21) - It is incredible. We're using it right now, uh, primarily with our paid acquisition clients and in funnels. And it is a game changer. Like, I was served an ad yesterday around, conversion like optimization and like why I should trust this company and it's a three day, training. And I was like, why do I need a training? Why do I need something live? Like, why do I need to replay and spend six hours learning this? Like, there's definitely AI tools that could do a better job now. Mm-hmm. So the market is, there's gonna be a massive shift. I think people are gonna expect AI to be in programs, for example, in agencies, and then creating their own,

Josh (00:13:02) - You know, I gotta pitch, from a guest, to be on this show. And I could tell it was written in ai, but I tell you the stuff that was in, because it wasn't the level of personalization where it felt like a human. Mm. But it was fascinating what the AI was, you know, kind of triggering onto like, you know, some of my, you know, kind of met or you know, kind of some of my philosophical leanings. Oh, it definitely pulled that in. And I could tell, I was like, yeah, this is an AI that has definitely gone through a lot of my content. Again, it was, you know, still kind of a generic post. So, so close, so close.

Shannon (00:13:39) - Well, we need humans with it. Yes. Well, I don't believe that AI is gonna take over the job for humans. I think it's gonna help us be way more productive. I think it's gonna enable us to take on way more clients and get results much faster. That's what I truly believe is gonna happen.

Josh (00:13:56) - Shannon, someone's been listening to our conversation. I wanna make sure that they pull up your website. It's shannondesouza.com. So in your podcast player, click on the little information button, show notes, description, whatever. Click on that. Got a direct link, Shannon, to your website. It'll come up in a browser. And then what would you recommend? Like what's the next step if someone's, you know, been, did they, maybe they Googled you and this podcast came up, they've been listening to our conversation and now they're ready for a little bit more of you. What, what, what, where would you

Shannon (00:14:25) - Send them? There's a couple ways to hang out with me. First, I have a Facebook group, consistent Clients Club for high ticket coaches. There's one option over there. I love networking. So if you have a sales problem, I love using my brain to like find a way to fix things. Get on a call with me. Let's chat, let's network. Like you can get an audit, an end-to-end audit from me. That's absolutely free in this moment. So I would say definitely highly recommend that. And let's just see where our relationship goes.

Josh (00:14:57) - Fantastic. I love it. Again, Shannon Desouza, your website, Shannon desouza.com, chief Revenue virtual Chief Revenue Officer and sales coach. Shannon, it's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for joining us.

Shannon (00:15:10) - Thank you so much, Josh. I appreciate you.

Josh (00:15:18) - Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit up my influence.com/guest. If you're a listener, I'd love to shout out your business to our whole audience for free. You can do that by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or join our listener Facebook group. Just search for the Thoughtful Entrepreneur and Facebook. I'd love, even if you just stopped by to say hi. I'd love to meet you. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together we are empowering one another as thoughtful entrepreneurs. Hit subscribe. So that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes each day. Thanks for listening, and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.