Terry Sullivan | Increasing Your Profitability Through Social Selling
In this episode of Around Flower Mound, we chat with long time Flower Mound resident Terry Sullivan. Terry is widely known as a LinkedIn Guru, having trained more than 17,000 business leaders, owners, and individuals nationwide.
In 2010, Terry founded his company Buzz Pro— a nationally recognized digital branding and social selling solutions training company. Prior to starting his own business, Terry was the director of marketing for Verizon Communications. Now, Terry works tirelessly to increase profitability for his clients.
Terry has a lot to offer in the way of digital branding advice, and we’ll chat about what he loves about Flower Mound, who he wants to be a hero to, and…
Increasing your profitability through social selling
Developing your professional brand on LinkedIn
Why digital branding is important to your success
What Terry believes makes some individuals successful while others struggle
And more
Mentioned in this episode:
Connect with Terry on LinkedIn
Transcript
Nicole Smith Woodard: Today I'm so excited to introduce you to an absolutely fantastic Flower Mound resident. As you know, Around Flower Mound is all about bringing light to community leaders, business owners, parents and charities within our fantastic community. We in Flower Mound are so blessed to have a neighbor and fellow resident who is widely known as the LinkedIn Guru. Having trained more than 17,000 business leaders, owners and individuals nationwide. Welcome my friend, Terry Sullivan.
Terry Sullivan: Well, thank you very much, Nicole. It's an absolute honor and pleasure to be on your podcast. Thanks for the invite.
Nicole: Absolutely. Well, I am so grateful to have been introduced to Terry by my friend Lauren years ago. And I have found Terry to be one of the most motivated, generous and dynamic people I know. He and his wife have been residents of Flower Mound for the past 23 years. They've raised two rockstar kids who've gone on to become scientists and master's degrees speech pathologists and just amazing folks.
And so just a little bit more about him before we jump into our questions. In 2010, Terry founded his company Buzz Pro, which is a nationally recognized digital branding and social selling solutions training company. Now prior to founding Buzz Pro, Terry was director of marketing for Verizon Communications. He holds an MBA from Texas State University and a social media marketing certificate from Splash Media University, which is one of the nation's top social media training companies.
I know this to be true, Terry works tirelessly to increase profitability for his clients. He's a thought leader and a difference-maker in the social selling world. He serves as a technology advisor for many companies, organizations and universities throughout the United States. I'm so grateful to have some of your time today, Terry. Thank you again for being here.
Terry: Oh boy, after that introduction, I'm going to have to hire myself. Thank you so much.
Nicole: Well, isn't that interesting since I have certainly heard you myself. And in fact, just before we even get too much further than that, for folks who like to multitask while they listen to podcasts, if you get a chance to see Terry's profile on LinkedIn, you must connect with him. He is just a wealth of information and tools for ways for us all to use this platform to its maximum. So we're going to get into that a little bit. But first things first, what is your favorite thing about Flower Mound?
That Family Aura
Terry: You know, I think that it's the fam, the sense of family and community in Flower Mound. All my neighbors are wonderful. They're my best friends. You know, we were out and about this weekend just mowing the lawn and talking and talking about updates about their children who all went to school with my kids. And it's just really been a tremendous family experience for my wife, Sydney and I, Nicole.
So I think if there's one thing it would be, the thing I like about Flower Mound the most just the whole family aura our family culture, if you will. And then I have to be very candid, I travel a lot. So the fact that I'm 15 minutes from the DFW Airport is the second very closely related thing about Flower Mound. Because I fly quite a bit and I absolutely love the fact that I can jump in an Uber car and, you know, 10, 15 minutes later, I'm at my gate. So that's really, really, really a big plus for me.
Nicole: Well, absolutely, especially since literally because your work is global, you don't have to live here and you choose to. And I think you've just encapsulated why a lot of people make Flower Mound their home, so that's awesome. Well, cool. Okay, so now let's, tell us about your company Buzz Pro. So what do you do and who do you want to be a hero to?
Terry: Yes. So I work with both individuals and companies. And I trained them on two things. Number one, I trained them on how to create a digital brand on LinkedIn. And what is a brand? A brand is all about who you are, what you do, and how you can help. And that, it's really that simple, Nicole. A lot of people make a really big deal about their brands. But in the end, you want to just tell people within three to five seconds, how you can help them and what differentiates you from other professionals in your field.
And then the other thing I work on with my clients is I teach them how to use LinkedIn. And, you know, so many people have a LinkedIn profile brand and they just sit back and wait for something to happen. So whether you're looking for clients or you're looking for a job, you know, they've got that brand with that keyword in it or two and they're just waiting for something to happen.
And what they don't realize is nothing really happens until you have a conversation with someone. So I train people in what we call social selling, which is hugely different than social media. You know, social media, Nicole, is kind of like a party. And if you're going to throw a party, it takes a lot of work. You have to have to, you know, food and right to, you know, make the right food, invite the right people and maybe even have a band. And so the whole idea is to just have a lot of fun.
Whereas social selling is a little bit more strategic, a little bit more deliberate in terms of who you connect with and who you do develop those relationships with. And then, and the analogy I always use with my clients and with my, people that I talked about what I do is, you know, having a brand is critically important. It's like having a Porsche if you like fancy cars, but if you have a Porsche and that Porsche is out in your driveway, but you don't know where to stick the key to start it, what good is it?
So I teach people how to drive that Porsche or, you know, how to buy a Porsche and then how to drive it. And the same thing with LinkedIn. I teach them how to create that brand that tells people, you know, who are they, who you are and how you can help within seconds. And then I also train them on, now that you've got a LinkedIn profile, how do you use it to develop your professional network. You know, that's, and that's where the real opportunity is with LinkedIn social selling.
Nicole: I love it. And I've seen it firsthand. So thank you. You are a true master. Now tell us a bit about your background. How did you get to this stage of your career?
Terry’s Entrepreneurial Journey
Terry: Yes, so I worked with mid-tier and large companies my entire career. I was always in a marketing role. And my most, my last role was with a little company called Verizon, where I was executive director for their FIOS optical product. It was a, what it was was a fiber optic product and they had, which had telephone and internet access, as well as TV or networking programming. And so I did that for many years, 14 years or so.
And then in 2010, I was basically asked to move to Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and we have a ranch out in West Texas and my in-laws were there and it's absolutely our getaway and it was just going to be too far away for me. So I elected to leave the company and in 2010 there weren't a lot of jobs. It was during a pretty big recession.
And so I actually started helping lots and lots of people with LinkedIn to find jobs. And an interesting thing happened is many of them landed jobs. And when they did, they would call me back and hire me to actually train their teams. And it just kind of grew. For example, one lady, I helped her land a job as chief marketing officer with a little company out in LA called Transamerica. And so she became their chief marketing officer. She called me up and said Terry, guess who landed a job as CMA with Transamerica? And I said, Oh my gosh, Lisa.
And by the way, Lisa Woodward, she lives here in Flower Mound. And so yep, and Lisa, I said that's great, Lisa. She goes well, now that you've helped me land this amazing job, I'm gonna hire you to train our 1200 largest business owner clients for Transamerica. So I give a training presentation for 1200 business owners. And then I got home and my voicemail on my digital phone was absolutely packed with many, many, many business owners who wanted me to do the same thing for their company. So that catapulted my Buzz Pro business.
And as a matter of fact, I just gave a presentation about four months ago in Napa Valley, California. And a person who was at that Transamerica presentation back in 2011 actually hired me. So she called me many years later to hire me. So it was a very good deal. So that's kind of how it grew from me being an executive at Verizon to owning my own company to making, you know, presentations, training presentations, and train companies all over the United States. That's kind of how it grew.
Nicole: Well, I love that. You're a perfect example of just pivoting when the market shifted and that you brought so much value to people that they couldn't help but find ways to give back to you. So I love that. And in fact, you are an expert. I know this to be, I know this firsthand. You're an expert in being of service by helping people create their own unique online brands to achieve consistently strong results. Why is this so important?
The Importance of Building a Strong Brand
Terry: Well, it's, you know, first of all, the whole concept of making cold calls, whether you're looking for clients or working for a job, used to be able to pick up the phone and just call some, many someones and have conversations. And now I don't know about you, Nicole, but I think I got six robocalls today on my cell phone. So I didn't answer any of them. People just don't answer phones anymore. So cold calls don't work.
So really, the reason why this is so important is because we're all looking for quick answers to our questions and to our problems, quite frankly. And so more and more and more people are going to the internet to either find a place to eat dinner or find someone to do business with. And so you want to make sure that number one, that you can be found very quickly, right? And that's the whole search engine optimization with LinkedIn, you know, having the right keywords in your profile.
But then, even more importantly than people finding you, Nicole, is once they find you, you know, you want to tell them within seconds, who you are, what you do and how you can help, right? Because if they can't see that within seconds, they're going to click in and out of your profile very, very quickly and go on to a competitor. So the reason LinkedIn is so important is, you know, it's the first place people go to find out more about you and your business.
So even if you don't use LinkedIn yourself to prospect, you better at least have a LinkedIn profile from a professional standpoint for when people do reconnaissance kind of work. You know, in other words, they're going to be looking for a real estate agent or looking for a broker company and you want to make sure that they find you when they find you. They know why you're, why they should do business with you instead of some other competitor, you know?
Nicole: Mm-hmm. Agreed. Agreed. Well, you've had tremendous success in the speaking, training and consulting businesses. What do you believe that makes some successful while others struggle?
Giving Away Free Content
Terry: Yeah, I think that when I first got into this business, I actually helped six or seven, I think was seven consultants, business consultants, free of charge, so they could give me some advice on how to better, you know, make my business a success. It was so interesting because not any of those business consultants actually bought into what I was trying to accomplish.
So they, you know, they all wanted to make the charge for my training presentations 100% of the time, charge for everything. Well, here's the deal. With the internet, you know, anything that you can find out if that answers to any question or need that you have on the internet. And so, you know, you have to, just the way you give information now, in terms of being a professional trainer, is different. You just have to give it all away.
Like, when you go to one of my training, three training presentations, you know, you'll be exhausted because I mean, every, I can give you five nuggets of information every minute. Do this, do this, try this out, you know? Whereas I can't tell you how many presentations I went to where the information, the advice, you get five nuggets an hour. I'm like, boy, what a waste of my time. So I guess what I'm trying to say here, Nicole, is that I learned very, very quickly that I have to be a servant leader. And I have to help people and give them as much free help as I can.
And then the paid gigs just happened. There are individuals that just say, Hey, can you just do this for me? Or there are companies that go Hey, you did this for me, now, can you train my big, you know, big company? I worked out in Atlanta, Georgia last year for Charles Hubbard who owns a big television network called UP TV and you probably have it on direct tv if you have cable, but it's the number one family content provider in the country.
And it's amazing. It was such an honor to present to him and his 11 executive vice presidents up in Atlanta. And, you know, I got that gig because I helped somebody for free who recommended me to Charlie. So it's a, it truly is all about helping people unconditionally and not expecting anything in return. And when it does, be very appreciative and just overachieve and over-deliver on, you know, helping that person out. That's kind of my strategy.
Nicole: Well, and it definitely shows. You are, again, one of the most generous givers that I know and at so much value. So I just appreciate, and you've given me book recommendations, you've given me introductions, all kinds of connection points throughout the years that we've known one another. And that has just been wonderful. And speaking of, what book or books are you currently reading that you would recommend to others right now?
Pertinent Book Recommendations
Terry: Right, right. Well, of course, if you're not, you will recognize this book. One of my favorite books is the Seven Levels of Communication by Michael Mayer. And it's a big book in your real estate industry. And I just love, you know, how he promotes having both champion and invest on referral partners. I used to focus just on getting clients. And that only goes so far. You know, you really have to focus on developing relationships with your key contacts and prospects. And that's why I'm so eager to help others out because I know if I help them, maybe if something opens up, they'll reciprocate.
The other some of the other great books, there's a book called Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount. And I think, you know, there is a sales element to our lives, whether we want to admit it or not. You know, we're all sales professionals. We're selling ourselves, we're selling our companies, our products or services. So I think he has some really good advice in his book. Jeb Blount's book called Fanatical Prospecting. And then a couple others. One is called Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port. And, you know, if you want to be a professional trainer, speaker to promote your content, a blogger, you know, Michael Port is just like, amazing.
He changed my world. And then lastly, in terms of digital marketing, website development, there's a book called Content Chemistry, and that's by Andy Chrestodina. And that is just, you know, what should you have in your website? What should you have in an email marketing campaign? It's every question you ever had about digital media, digital marketing. He's got amazing, proven answers that are very helpful. But those are my top three or four that I would recommend anyone listening to your podcast today.
Nicole: Well, I love how you are growth-oriented. You're always learning, growing, changing and always contributing. So you are just really an amazing person, an amazing friend and certainly a very accomplished professional. I am honored that we could spend some
Terry: Oh, thank you.
Nicole: Yeah absolutely. I'm honored that we could spend some time together today. I do recommend that anyone and everyone listening to this podcast reach out directly to you to gather additional, again, your free LinkedIn tips. Just wonderful opportunity. So I'm so grateful that you were able to join us today on the Around Flower Mound Podcast. So how can people connect with you if they want to learn more?
Terry: Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, get on LinkedIn and do a search for Terry Sullivan Dallas. I'll be number one. Send me a connection request, I'll be sure to send you a link where you can download my famous LinkedIn tips document. And this is a document, Nicole, that's just chock full of how to branding tips for your LinkedIn profile.
And then also check out my buzzpro.com website. Click on the speaking tab. I present all over the country. And I would absolutely love to meet you in person. So check out when I'll be speaking in a town or in a city near you and come on out to see me. So connect with me on LinkedIn and I'll send you my LinkedIn tips. And then also check out my presentation calendar on buzzpro.com and come and see me. I'd love to meet you in person.
Nicole: Well, thank you again so much for joining us today. And I look forward to seeing you in person soon.
Terry: Thank you, Nicole. It's been a pleasure and honor to be on your podcast. Thank you.
