1 Out of 100 Sellers Does This. He Built 8x Pipeline Doing It.

Neal Goyal: It's the equivalent of being at a cocktail party, seeing a pretty girl across the room at the bar. You walk straight up to her and the first thing out of your mouth is there are no shortcuts to building a relationship. I live on LinkedIn and I would say that is about 50% of my day. One out of every 100 sellers creates regular content on LinkedIn. The other 99 don't. What's the hardest thing about what you do? Finding a way to build a real relationship with the end brand. I've spent my entire career in the direct to consumer ecosystem, and one of the hardest things to do is build trust with the brands that you serve. If you have 14,483 software companies, they're all trying to gain the attention of the same 2,000 brands on Shopify. Building trust is really difficult. Building relationships that stick is really difficult, and that is the hardest part of what we do. But it's a large part of every GTM Motion that I get really excited about.

Sean Weisbrot: So you've been with Postpilot for eight months. You told me you eight x their pipeline. How did you do that? I've spent my career focusing

Neal Goyal: on software companies in the ecommerce world, serving all the amazing brands that we know and love. The go to market motion and outbound motion often looks like, oh, let me go spam all decision makers with an email. Let me go cold call them. And at the end of the day, that's something that really erodes trust, and performance of that has diminished over the course of time. So the question is how do you actually cut through the noise? You cut through the noise by genuinely developing trust, and how I typically have done that is through LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been the single largest source for all of my career successes, I would argue, but definitely the source of pipeline, definitely the source of building trust and building relationships. Right? Others that use it for sales often repeat their spam like behavior that they did in other channels, whereas I prefer to leverage LinkedIn as a a true place to build relationships, build connections, deliver value, and then build trust in that process, thought leadership in that process, and ultimately command attention from an audience. So we're often in the game of competing for attention rather than competing for solution to solution. It's like, how can you captivate, entertain, educate, and deliver value to an audience and build trust in that fashion? So that's how I traditionally build my DTM motions as I do that, and has been the largest success for what's been done at Postpilot over the last eight months.

Sean Weisbrot: So do you combine content and outreach called outreach, or do you allow your content to get people to reach out to you? Like, how do you actually use LinkedIn to manage that?

Neal Goyal: Yeah. Great question. When you think about content, I think content is actually the last step in what I consider a three part flywheel. So content, is, very much like a billboard. Like, hi. I have this thing that feels important, and I want people to see it. Right? Come to me. Look at me. Look at me. Right? And if you think about a what it means to build a relationship, that that's asking for something. So the ask in a real relationship typically comes after you've given something first. Right? So give more than you can take. So when you think about this, like, flywheel of LinkedIn, those who are using it most effectively, the way I've built relationship on LinkedIn, the way I've built GTM motions using LinkedIn really actually starts by showing up for your audience or your target ICP first, showing up where they are. So for instance, you have a, a CMO at a brand that you're trying to get in front of, and that CMO posts actively on LinkedIn or or or occasionally on LinkedIn. Go cheer them on. Go and, be in their comments. Be the person that says something, really positive, roots for them, delivers value, adds a unique piece of insight, and do so in the comments. Very few people will remember who liked their post. Everybody will remember a thoughtful comment. Right? Now when you think about outbound, outbound is you know, salespeople, I think, by default, are, like, very impatient individuals. I'll put myself in that same bucket. Right? And so oftentimes, it's like, hey. Let me let me go ask for a meeting. Let me go ask for a DM or or ask for something in the DMs or send a connection request. But the reality is is that when you think about connection requests when they're sent on LinkedIn, what? One out of five connection requests are accepted. Four out of five are ignored or declined. Right? And why is that? It's because they don't know you. Right? It's like somewhat like, by by accepting a connection request on LinkedIn, they're inviting you into their world. They're inviting saying, yes. Look at my what I'm doing, and, look at I'll look what you're doing, and I'm giving you free two way communication to communicate with me. It's like literally giving a stranger a phone number. Right? And so that's a difficult thing to do, which is why the connect rates are so low. Whereas, if you have already shown up for that particular person for a period of time, thirty, forty five days, engaged for a period of time with their content, made them laugh, cheered them on, then all of a sudden, when you've made enough, what I call, deposits, deposits in the form of, like, things you give to someone in a relationship, then you earn the right to say, you know what? I'm gonna take a withdrawal and make a withdrawal now. And that withdrawal is just sending the connect request, asking inherently or implicitly to be a part of the world. Right? Not asking for a meeting, not asking for them to do anything other than hit accept. Right? So, typically, by doing kinda taking that philosophy, my connect accept grace, acceptance rate's around 80%, right, which is kind of insane when you think about it. And many people will be like, hey, Neil. It's because you have a LinkedIn audience. Like, that's why. Well, no. We're I'm not connected with that person. They have no idea who I am. Right? But they do when they see the connect request, they're like, Neil, that sounds familiar. Oh, yeah. He's that guy that's super caffeinated, high energy, always positive. He's always in my comments. I I don't remember what he said, but I do remember how he made me feel, and he's always got something nice to say. Fine. Accept. Boom. That is, like, step one complete in terms of showing up for them. Step two, getting it accepted because they won't see your content unless they've accepted. You're not connected with them, so they won't see it. Right? You might get views, but they might not be the relevant views. Right? You're talking about your target, brand that you wanna work with or a customer that you wanna work with. How do you get them to see your content? That only happens after you have a two way connection, on LinkedIn, and the only way you get that connection is by showing up for them first.

Sean Weisbrot: It feels like a full time job. It is? How do you get work done if all you're doing is is spending time on LinkedIn building relationships?

Neal Goyal: I live on LinkedIn, and I would say that is about 50% of my day. Right? When you think about, GTM leadership, and and even as as someone as an individual I see, if you are looking to achieve sales success, the the the the most important factor in all of that is pipeline. Right? How much pipeline do you have? I personally consider myself, like, just an above average seller, like, just above average. But as an individual contributor back in my selling days, the reason why I always outperformed every other rep that I sat alongside is I just had eight x a pipeline of everybody else. And so for that in in that scenario, you don't have to be an excellent seller. You just by a factor of numbers, you end up performing better than everyone else. And so that's where it's like, okay. If pipeline is the most important contributor, and building pipeline is harder than ever. Like I mentioned before, in my space, ecommerce, 14,483 software companies chasing the same 2,000 brands on Shopify, those poor email inboxes of those CMOs and VPs of marketing and whatnot, like, I can't even imagine what they look like. And it's the reason why performance of emails channel has gone down so much, particularly for our niche. Right? So so the question is, like, how do you cut through that noise? And if pipe gen is the key to to ultimately, driving revenue and performance, the question is what type of pipe gen works? And for me, it's not email. For me, it's like go to LinkedIn. That's where your audience is. That's where your ICP spends their time. Your average customer is actually clicking into LinkedIn six to seven times per day. They're clicking to their in email inbox because it's a giant to do list of things that they need to weave through. They click into LinkedIn because they're, like, bored, or they wanna kill the time, or they wanna find something else to do, or or they wanna be entertained, or they wanna see what's up in their industry, or what what's going on with their network. So why not meet them where they are? Right? Like, if that's where they're spending their time, why as someone that's trying to build pipeline, why wouldn't you spend your time there as well? So short answer, yeah. It is a full time job. And so when I develop these systems across sales teams, that's kind of part of the mantra that I preach as well. Right? Like, show up where your prospects are, and that's that's on LinkedIn right now.

Sean Weisbrot: When I get connection requests, I just look at, are they relevant? And the vast majority of them aren't. Some of them give me a note. Most of them don't. I look at the note. Usually, the note tells me I don't wanna talk to them. And and I think I'm more likely to respond if they don't have a note. But, yeah, I think most people aren't relevant. And I I do recognize the part you were talking about with content where I've been talking a lot more about the software that I've been building, SparkFox, and I have been getting a lot of ghostwriters and, like, agency owners that do content stuff responding you know, commenting on my content. I was like, but I'm not serving you. You're not the right people. I'm trying to attack founders of companies or investors of companies. And so, that's also because, possibly, I am not going to my ICP. But then again, I'm at a stage where I'm trying to figure out who my audience is. I'm trying to identify who's gonna be the one that's most likely to buy and and and want it enough to buy. And so I and it's different for you where it's very easy. You know exactly who you're looking for. You know the names of the ecommerce brands. You know this and that. So it's it's easier for you to figure that out. But for me, it's like, well, I could add a ton of investors and spend six months talk you know, trying to reach out to them, but they could be the wrong people. I could spend six months talking to founders. They could be the wrong people. You know? Maybe agencies are the right people. I don't even know. So I I'm building for a problem that I have that I'm sure other people have and are interested in, But, simultaneously trying to figure out who will be the buyer, and I don't know. Maybe that's a bad idea. But

Neal Goyal: Well, actually, I I I think LinkedIn is an incredible feedback loop for for that too. Right? So, like, oftentimes, you're you're absolutely right. Like, in my space, like, I know exactly who my my ICP is. I know exactly who my customer is. If I look at all of my LinkedIn connections, about 90% of them are in my ICP, which is a brand side founder or marketing leader. Right? So I'm speaking directly to the audience I'm I'm looking to sell to. That's but that's when it's a defined ICP. Whereas though I mean, we have so many startups that are popping up. It's easier than ever to launch an an a new solution. And and as a result, the first thing you're thinking about is, like, well, is this solution gonna be valuable to an audience? Is it worth scaling? Is it worth diving deeper into? And in that process, you're trying to understand who the audience is. LinkedIn is that feedback loop. Like, if you're bringing in the wrong folks, then you understand, okay. Is it something with my product? Is it something with my messaging? What's my strategy? That can often, inform, like, what you should be writing about. But then the other part is is that going and finding that audience, using a tool like LinkedIn sales nav or or other tools to give you some kind of sense of who is that target ICP that you're going after that you think might do well. Make sure you put in the effort chasing after them in terms of, like, making deposits, ultimately getting those connection requests. So they see your content and fall into that flywheel, and then you have a quick feedback on whether or not it's resonating with that target audience. Right? But, again, it's a trial and test, and I think LinkedIn is a great feedback loop for all of that.

Sean Weisbrot: I think a lot of people are not doing what you do. I think a lot of people are and and I've been in rooms where people are talking about this, talking about strategy, where they will maximize the number of connection requests every day for as long as they can and send cold DMs to every single one of those people, but they probably don't have a content engine or they don't have a presence that really is something people are willing to respond to, and so they get really low response rates. Where I'm I have been focused on trying to create content, and Smart Fox is making a lot of that content for me. That's a question I wanted to ask you about as well. It's helping me to make a lot of content, but I'm not going and connecting with people. I'm not sending connection requests. I'm I'm actually getting thirty, forty, 50 people a week following me. My hope is the people following me are the right people, but I'm not, the vast majority of them are not connecting. They're not requesting to connect with me, and I'm not requesting to connect with them. So I think that's possibly where I'm falling short, personally. I think a lot of other people make big bigger mistakes than that.

Neal Goyal: I mean, you said it beautifully. It's like, how do you get the right people or you're the ones you're going after to see your content? You have to have that two way connection. You have to. Because, otherwise, yes, you'll there'll be plenty of people you're not connected with that'll see your content, but are they your ICP? No. Whereas if you send a connection request, you believe or at least have a thesis that they're in your ICP. Right? So you have to have that two way connection, but the problem is is that, like, if you send a con a cold connection request to somebody and you haven't just, like, doing it out of the blue, like, kinda you mentioned, you know, a few folks that are just, like, you know, spamming connect requests maxing out per day. It's the equivalent of being at a cocktail party, seeing a pretty cool girl across the room at the bar. You walk straight up to her, and the first thing out of your mouth is, can I have your phone number? Like, that's insulting. Like, doesn't work. It's, it it it it's it's just the wrong approach to build any sort of relationship. Right? That is what a cold connection request is. You're asking to be a part of their world out of the gate, and they know nothing about you. So what if you were to show up for them first for a period of time? It takes a thirty, forty five day runway. Like, it's not a quick fix. It does require a long game approach, and actually requires the desire to build a real relationship. Right? Like, that's that's the first and foremost. I think we often have a tendency to completely forget all proper social etiquette and behavior when we're on any type of virtual or online environment. Whereas would you behave this way and and send out a bunch of connect requests to a bunch of people live in in a cocktail room and go ask for 10 phone numbers all in one fell swoop? No. It seems so bizarre to go do that. But why do we behave that other

Sean Weisbrot: fair enough. Like, what are you at a cocktail party for? You're trying to meet people.

Neal Goyal: Yeah. But, I mean, at at at the end of the day, there's a way of doing that. Right? Like, the way of doing that where it's gonna have more success. Right? You're unlikely to be successful if you do that bam, bam, bam, 10 in a row. You might get one one out of 10. Right? But that's not the game we're playing here. If we're trying to build real relationships with all our of I all of our ICP, how do I get 80% of people to accept my connection request? That requires showing up for them first. Doing something that adds value to them, makes them feel good, cheers them on, that requires showing up for them. And that requires the long game approach, something that most people actually deprioritize or forget in that whole outbound process.

Sean Weisbrot: So I don't normally talk about this, but I will. So I asked my wife out after meeting her for, like, a minute, and she she said yes because she didn't realize that it was a date. So she so she's Vietnamese. I met her in Vietnam. I arrived there my first day. She was managing the Airbnb that I was staying in, and she showed up to hand me the key and make sure that there was no issues with the room, with the apartment. And it was around dinner time. I didn't know anybody. I had never been to the country. And I was like, hey. Are you doing anything for dinner? And she's like, no. I go, great. I'm taking you for dinner. She's like, okay. Then we went out for dinner. She she thought nothing of it. And, you know, like, a week later, we were dating.

Neal Goyal: Well, see, not not everyone is as lucky as you are. I mean, like, that that sounds like, sounds like you got some k, man.

Sean Weisbrot: Well, being white in an Asian country helps. And she told me recently that when she was younger, she did dream of having a a half white baby. So that also helps that I picked the right one. K. But she's also very, very sweet. We get along very well.

Neal Goyal: Things fell in your favor there.

Sean Weisbrot: Yes. For sure. So AI. Are you using AI for connecting or writing content or no?

Neal Goyal: I personally do not. Right? I personally do not. When, yes. AI I think the only place where AI is an assist is in creating the content. Right? Creating the content itself. Not necessarily ideating the content. I think, ultimately, for me, it's my own ideas. It's my own copy, and I use AI to refine it and make it sound just a little bit better. Right? So that's the limitation of what I use in AI. But when it comes to, like, actually I think that's where I completely take a polar opposite approach to almost everyone that's building some kind of AI outreach tool, right, for for the purpose of outreach, is there are no shortcuts to building a relationship. There are no shortcuts to building trust. There are no shortcuts to showing up for someone more than they show up for you. Those are all things that just require a genuine desire to serve, a genuine desire to show up, and a a genuine desire to build a real relationship. You can't AI any of those out. And so when you think about the time that I spend on LinkedIn, it's with all of that in mind, and those are things that AI cannot do. Or I I I wouldn't say this. It's not the AI cannot do. I will not allow AI to do for me. Because for me, if I genuinely want to build a a relationship with person a, b, and c, well, that requires me doing the things that I would do at a cocktail party or in a in a in a, you know, physical, social environment. Right? I behave the same way there. And and that's something that AI, I don't think, is ever gonna replace. Now that said, AI can make things more efficient, for sure. AI can help me with things like analytics and helping me understand what's resonating and what's not. So on the data side, AI can help with refining copy, but the concept of actually building relationship, the concept of AI commenting, oh my gosh. No. Please no. Never. Like, it's the bane of my existence. AI DMs, never in a million years would I ever engage in such. It's just not my thing, simply because when I reach out to somebody, I'm reaching out to them with the desire to genuinely shake their hand, and you can't automate that. Right? You can't automate that. It has to come from a genuine place.

Sean Weisbrot: AI comments piss me off so much. It's so obvious that they've written a comment for someone even if the comment is, like, two sentences. And it's it's so frustrating because it's so obvious. Like, how lazy are you that you can't even write a comment? Now to be fair, I'm building a tool that generates ideas and generates content, but I'm my goal is to keep it as human as possible. But, like, even I think AI comments are awful. And sometimes I see the comments, and I and, like, sometimes I see people use AI comments on my content, and I wanna give them hell for it. But then I think about how the AI wrote my post, and, like, I can't give them too much of a hard time because the AI wrote my content. It's like, how dare you use an AI to comment when I've just used an AI to generate the post? But, like, even I write my own comments. Like, come on, guys. How hard is that?

Neal Goyal: Yeah. I mean, AI commenting and AI supported posts are, I think, two on two different ends of the spectrum. Right? Like, if you think about the purpose of content, of the comment, I want to deliver value to somebody else. I'm showing up for somebody else, and I want to add my POV on somebody else's content. Those are all things that do require that physical desire or or internal desire to deliver that value or that touchpoint. Whereas the content itself, to me, like, as long as the content is authentic, comes from your POV, and you're using AI to further fuel, a, what's performing well, understand acting based on data, acting based on performance, what's resonating with your ICP, and then on top of that, refining what is already your unique POV on the world or subject matter, then, yeah, it's absolutely warranted, and it's absolutely a good thing to do. I think the the commenting thing is the one where you're reaching out into somebody else's turf. You're the one who's looking to build a relationship, and that's something that, in my view, shouldn't be automated or AI.

Sean Weisbrot: So 50% of your day is LinkedIn. What's the other 50% of your day?

Neal Goyal: Well, I think the remaining 50, percent is is devoted to, helping the the team understand the philosophy behind this approach too. Right? So one is, like, actually putting the pipeline engine in motion. The other part is this type of approach is not innate. It's not natural for most, and and requires, like, reinforcement. It also requires, helping anyone that deploys a strategy to kind of get oftentimes out of their own way. Like, posting on LinkedIn is scary. It actually genuinely is. Like, for those that don't do it frequently, it's scary. It's it's a form of public speaking. And, everyone's got their own kind of predispositions on what it means to to do public speaking. One's like, I couldn't even bear the thought of it. Others are like, it's it's cringe. Other others believe I don't even know what where to start. Others have this imposter syndrome. Am I gonna get called out for not being an expert on something that I'm speaking about? Like, am am I credible enough to speak on this? Like, all of these thoughts enter someone's mind when it comes to creating content, being active on LinkedIn. And so, oftentimes, a lot of the time that's devoted to this type of pipe gen is also devoted to helping everyone through those. I think the ultimately, it's like, do you wanna be successful in in sales? Do you wanna be successful in driving revenue for the company you work for? If the answer is yes, let's follow these. I can help anybody through imposter syndrome. I can help anybody through fear. I can help anybody through, through, you know, I don't know where to start or processing something. The only one part that I cannot help is when someone says, ew. This is too cringe. I can't do it. Right? And that's where this whole kind of process falls on its head. It's like, okay. Do you want to be in sales then? Because if you had the opportunity to stand on stage in in a theater with the seats filled of 200 members of your ICP, and you had the opportunity to talk about what you're selling, offering, you know, to your audience, and you had the opportunity to stand on stage for thirty minutes, would you want that opportunity? And if that answer is no, then I don't know why you're in sales, or in a revenue driving position. And if the answer is yes, of of course you would, which most salespeople would say is, of course, I would love that opportunity. Then why is it that none of you go on to LinkedIn and create content? Why is it that one out of every 100 sellers creates regular content on LinkedIn? The other 99 don't. Like, that's a wild stat, and so it's just a function of stepping your foot on that stage. So, what do you do with the rest of the time? Oftentimes, it's it's one is actually doing the pipe gen, building relationships. I very much as much as I'm a leader of a team, I operate like an IC myself. I lead by example. I build pipeline alongside my team. That's just part of my mantra. Farthest thing from a dashboard leader, but the the remainder is, like, helping everyone understand that. And once once a seller gets out of their shell and is able to create that content, with with regularity and then more importantly, build the flywheel that allows that content to be seen by the right folks, and then they see the the pipeline impact, then then all of a sudden, like, life changes for them. And all of a sudden, you have reps that are just absolutely murdering their number and their targets simply because they just have so much more pipeline than everybody else. And I think the the the part that I love most that gets me most excited about it is in that process of doing this, you actually are building your personal brand in the process without talking about your personal brand. Right? And your personal brand is the the the most portable thing, that it it it's truly portable in the sense that it follows you. Your audience will follow you. The ability to captivate attention of your target ICP will follow you, and everyone's watching you do this. Right? So you end up becoming a very attractive candidate to other companies. You end up, drawing more individual in your into your orbit that that are gonna provide some kind of unique opportunity in in some way, and and all kind of things kinda fall into place very, easily for future steps of your career just by virtue of building this audience. So it helps you crush in your day job, but then also build an audience which will help you long run.

Sean Weisbrot: What's the most important thing you've learned so far in your career?

Neal Goyal: Stepping outside of a comfort zone and accepting jobs that you are not quite ready to take on. I think, we oftentimes were in this particularly in the software world, there's a lot of fear in the software world right now. Right? There's a lot of fear of what AI is going to do to displace, the workplace and reduce head counts. There's equally fear on what AI will do to make many software companies obsolete. And with all of that fear, I think the individuals at a company often have, have a lot of fear in, in taking making bold bets and and and taking risks. And in my view, something that's served me well, particularly over, like, the last, like, seven, eight years, is go after a job and a role and a function that you believe you can do. You've demonstrated the steps prior to your career that you think you can do it and make that bet and bet on yourself despite it being probably the highest risk environment that we're in for the space right now. And I think those who take those bets will ultimately, see a whole lot of reward from it. And then combine that with the fact that what I've learned is the the concept of building a personal brand on LinkedIn is something that has completely changed the shape of my career, like, completely changed the trajectory in every sense of the word. Just seven, eight years ago, I was a guy that was genuinely struggling with, like, getting I felt like I was getting started all over again, and LinkedIn completely changed the track record for me. And now it I feel like I can get into any door that I want to. I can open any conversation that I want to. I can, whether it's with an ICP or a prospective employer or a prospective partner or a relationship, it becomes extremely easy if you devoted the time to building that audience on LinkedIn. It follows you, and it pays you in ways that you can't possibly quantify or predict. But, ultimately, like, that's been a huge learning curve for me. And by continuing to invest in it, it's just paid off, and I'm so thankful for it.

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