How Sales Confidence CEO James Ski grew Sales Confidence to $453.1K revenue with a 52 person team in 2024.

so a couple of weeks ago when I was prepping for this talk um Nathan I suggested some talks that I have actual experience in and he didn't think they were a good idea so either he was like what else have you got to talk about I was like well I want to get to a hundred thousand followers in Tick Tock this year and he said well why don't you talk about Tick Tock so this is the reason I'm now speaking about Tick Tock at a conference in another country I've only visited a few times so hopefully though I do have some credibility in this so just to give you a bit of background I spent three and a half years working for LinkedIn and at LinkedIn I was responsible for linkedin's biggest customers in Europe so I had to advise Executives at Linked In on how to leverage LinkedIn so they could scale their businesses and often Executives at ftse 100 companies aren't that interested in social media I then went I then went to set on the largest community of sales leaders and sales people in Europe and that is my core business called sales confidence and our mission is basically to help sales people and sales leaders at each stage of their career with their mindset well-being and performance and ultimately I just want to help people with their confidence so you know if you can take something away from today um I just want you to believe more in yourself and if you can also use video to do that I think you're going to grow your businesses faster even if you're an employee or you know if you're a Founder good for you as well so we're going to be talking about why Tick Tock is the best marketing channel for bootstrap startups and everyone in 2023 okay oh I've gone back the wrong slide here we go I'm pressing the wrong buttons yes that's quick wasn't it good start all right God I'm eating into my time here getting you guys all excited uh can you just raise your hand how many of you are actually on tick tock okay so I've got to persuade 50 of You by the end of this to get on Tick Tock how many of you are on LinkedIn okay how many of you are on Twitter uh how many of you are on Instagram how many are on Snapchat get out come on Snapchat is way gone you shouldn't be still not you sunshine come on all right so over the next 20 minutes I'm going to be talking about why video is the most important um medium for you to grow any business in 2023 um I believe Tick Tock has the biggest reach and I actually believe whatever business you can and you've got you can make sales on Tick Tock um you can buy views very low cost very low cost low cost compared to any other platform right now um if you're posting regularly you're going to get more views and where is your audience when you're not working during the day in the evening time what are they doing they are on Tick Tock trust me even if they're a cat they have to be the cat to be on Tick Tock like I've seen people that have got Cat channels and I'm like yeah but I'm on Tick Tock my cat is no for you to run your cat's Channel you have to be on Tick Tock right so there everyone most of the there's a lot of people that are on Tick Tock and they're lurkers but they are going to see your content if you stop uploading video and there's a way to kind of break the ice and I've got five bonus tips at the end for for you to take advantage of so right now I kicked off my Tick Tock journey in like the 10th of January and I've gone to 6 000 in like 50 days my aim for this event um was ten thousand so I didn't hit that goal but my aim by the end of the year is to get to 100 000. so if you follow me on tick tock you might help me get to a hundred thousand by the end of the 12 months and hopefully um my journey will start to pay dividends as I grow it online just an important you're trying to build Trust online and why is it a competitive Advantage it's a competitive Advantage because it takes effort and it requires you to focus and concentrate more so than writing a text post or just uploading an image so whatever Arena you are in if you can differentiate Yourself by uploading videos about what you do and how you do it you are immediately going to stand out oh question go straight into the questions it would seem like that wouldn't work you're throwing that out there so firstly you're incorrect that's your purse that is the perception yeah every every every demographic you can think of even yours politely at 35 36 right is on Tick Tock I I discovered that and also I'm going to show you how I sold my products on Tick Tock to a demographic in in that area so so it is a perception now I know this is odd timing because it just came out in the the US news that they're trying to ban Tick Tock if you want to talk to me politically about why I think that's happening we'll save that for after the show or the after party tonight but for now let's just concentrate on video being the important medium and that you should be doing video anywhere and at any time it's just going to give you that edge as I talked about and to your point I'll answer that sir in a moment um it does Drive Revenue now put your hand up if you recognize any of these individuals come on all of you I mean that's the Rock at the end and that's Mr Beast who doesn't know who Mr Beast is in the U.S okay you've got Russell Brunson you've got uh Dan Martell you've got Noah and then you've got the guy F20 VC Harry stubbings okay a couple of people don't recognize them now in B2B SAS maybe not Mr Beast but in B2B SAS these four individuals dominate your channels 24 7. I guarantee you if you go on Instagram if you go on LinkedIn if you go on Tick Tock they will be on your feed every hour of the day and the question you have to ask yourself versus your competitors do you want to own the attention and do you want to be seen all of the time now you might not want to put in the work to do that and that's okay but you need to figure out how you can build a team to put you in a position so that you are being seen all the time because these individuals yes they have teams they have hugely successful businesses they already have big followings but I believe you can start from zero and within a couple of weeks on Tick Tock there's no other platform you could do this right now you could be at thousands of followers influencing your Market um who asked that question oh why is it different from Instagram in terms of the following right now I just think from I don't know the details of the algorithm but in terms of the reach that Tick Tock is giving video it's more likely with the main feed to spread your message versus Instagram and you've got to think now who's Instagram's owned by Facebook right so that advertising business and the way they manage and attribute reach is already sorted Tick Tock is still growing and they still want you to get onto Tick Tock and get a good following because you're going to spend more money so I still feel like they feed the algorithm in your niches if you get up on there and you get onto video it's going to spread it faster I quite like these questions come out at me so if you want to throw them at me just keep going okay so by the views it costs it's low cost and it does work um right now you could get a video that if you put it on any other channel no one will see but if you put it on Tick Tock and you spend a hundred dollars like I just spent you will get 10 000 maybe 50 000 views another question it did yes so I spent I started playing around with the advertising and I discovered that actually um I could get views much quicker at a super super low cost so for me what I did like on your featured section on Tick Tock I made sure that all my videos had over 50 000 views so if you look at my channel you can see that the top three videos I've got those views and that helps with social proof right and and that helps with what you're doing now if you're really um I don't know what's the word uh uh Keen like I am once you get to a thousand followers on Tick Tock you can live stream and you can go live to your audience going live is very nerve-wracking um but it it trains the brain to be prepared to be on stage at any time and also it drives up your following a lot quicker because again Tick Tock wants to feed you with more views so you keep coming back onto it and what I said earlier is that this is stuff I'm doing already I'm speaking now they're recording me on Tick Tock they're recording me on video at the back he's recording me on his phone all this content is being produced anyway so why don't you just put it up on Tick Tock you're doing it anyway like this is just my podcast I'm doing it anyway right you you might do an all hands film the All Hands you're filming content all the time so just get it up on Tick Tock and get it up on all your channels and utilize video much more than you are right now um anybody set up a tick tock account while we've been in this conversation yes two thank you well done okay eight minutes to go let's see how many more we can get on Tick Tock I don't I'm not even affiliated with them but uh clearly I'm a fan Okay so I made this point earlier your audience post 5 P.M I've realized so on LinkedIn I've got over 30 000 followers right it's taken me probably 10 years to do that the reality is LinkedIn is so noisy for B2B professionals now it's so competitive everyone's doing imagery even video and so I was like okay this year how am I going to stand out to my LinkedIn followers well I'm going to reach them when they're watching Netflix when they're chilling when they're at home in the evenings and the best way to do that is on the other channels now today I am talking about Tick Tock but I still feel that you could be getting people on the other channels as well and I think there's a mindset in B2B that says after 5 p.m no one's thinking about our business that's BS right what happens after the 5pm you just spend the evenings thinking about your day job and your problems well if you do if you're a Founder so if I if I can get my message out and to reach people in the evening when they log into LinkedIn the next day where i'm more actively selling or being proactive they're going to know my face my business rather than anyone else's um also I've learned it's a great Icebreaker because so few people are doing it in B2B that people keep coming up to me and saying hey you're the tick tock guy I've only got 6 000 followers but in B2B like it comes across like I'm the tick tock guy so in your industry suddenly you're like the tick tock person and that will be a nice Icebreaker for people to use and I do believe that Tick Tock are going to figure out B2B if even if you look at the feed right now and you know you see silly dances and I mean it's so much more the in 2020 I thought it was yesterday dances but now anything I I like music fashion parties restaurants dancing whatever it is is on Tick Tock but I think they will start to design the feed around the B2B aspect of things and you will find more of what you care about related to business content so it is going to happen but think of your post 5 PM audience and where they are and they're definitely on tick tock okay so this is back to your um question so here this this guy's a VP of sales and I sell to VPS of sales and they range from kind of 30 to I guess 50 plus and Beyond uh James your handsome face keeps popping up on my Tick Tock mate that's English that's friend mate means friend sounds like things are going well for you I need to upgrade my networking game and get back into it he goes on to say can we have a conversation a week later I sold him in the package for three thousand dollars that was directly related because he saw me on Tick Tock but he messaged me on LinkedIn That's The Power of it this guy right I've known him forever he knows my business but he he's not been responding to my messages on LinkedIn he doesn't respond to my emails suddenly he sees me on Tick Tock it reminds him about my business and now we're actually in business so you know that that that message for me has changed the game I'm now all in and on Tick Tock this year you know until it you know until or if it gets banned because that proves that you can generate Revenue off to okay okay so over this uh last 20 minutes I've talked about video being the most important um format do you agree that video is very important put your hand up okay great um Tick Tock has a bigger reach and your target audience is on there do you agree that your audience is on there put your hand up okay who doesn't what do you do just tell me who you sell to you've got okay okay just to that but what if you spent one day at home or in a student I made it a hundred videos you answered your question so to be fair to you right now so um I like I do believe so right now on my Tick Tock Channel I'm posting all my videos I have virtual assistants that help me I haven't got the numbers totally but I a lot of this you can do with virtual assistants and virtual assistants are excellent at what they choose to do if you choose to trust them um so maybe you can email me I'd like to know actually I should know but I haven't worked that out um another question yeah so I post I post under my name and I I do recommend that you build your personal brand up and then you build up your business Brands before doing it that would be my tip personally I'm going to go that way yeah I think so next question what was the question okay all right yes yes so any video that I do goes on all channels with captions uh I do use HootSuite yeah but I'll go on that's for scheduling how long the videos are minutes or 30 seconds I think you need to be in your own content so you need to bring the people to you I had the Good Fortune of sitting next to Neil Patel last night thanks to Alex fuma last he he told me he just brings the content production team to his house he doesn't leave his house to make his content so you know depends how much money you've got obviously but um I do feel like you can create a lot more content than you feel like right now okay so I have got um some bonus tips for you and then I'll take some more questions okay so number one thing you have to do if you're going to get anywhere is you're going to have to set up a tick tock account okay um start following people first you've done that on every other social media platform you've ever set up you just start following people in B2B that you're interested in because that's going to help you learn what counts and what matters and trust me you will see some incredible content on there it's really fascinating once you start to pick and choose and create your feed now the fun bit and we've got 40 seconds to do this can everyone get on their feet quick I said this was going to be fun all right get out your phones if you have a phone that was a joke everyone's got a phone so why did all you have to do now for the next 20 seconds or 30 seconds is film yourself oh and just introduce yourself to yourself tell yourself what you do what does your company do and save it into your phone go what'd you do come on all right we're at SAS open we've got everyone doing a tick tock video let's see how it goes 2023 who knows all right guys stop I know I put you on the spot he's still going look you can sit down sit down the the point the point I made there is you just have to start making videos forget your baggage in your head stop being shy don't worry about your face Own It own your voice own your hair whatever it is uh try and get to a thousand followers and number five go live and that's a wrap-up I'm over time thanks very much boom [Applause]