“How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business” with Charles Moreton, Chief Revenue Officer at Videolicious

Understand the power of your network. Having 50 of the right contacts is better than having 10,000 of the wrong ones. There is a reason you are on LinkedIn, and you have to craft your network that way. Connections you’re unfamiliar with may post things you don’t want to be associated with. Don’t accept people just to increase your number — do your homework and understand why you want them to be a part of your network.

As part of my series of interviews about “How to Use LinkedIn To Dramatically Improve Your Business”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Charles Moreton, Chief Revenue Officer at Videolicious.

Charles is an accomplished Senior Executive, Entrepreneur, Consultant, and Thought Leader with more than 15 years of success in driving sales for SaaS companies managing millions of dollars and thousands of sellers. Leveraging extensive experience building sales teams from the ground up, Charles has held leadership positions with Aviso Inc, Apttus, Saba Software, ADP, Moreton Business Solutions, SumTotal Systems, The Living Center, NCC Group, Equity Space Lending, and Venetian Real Estate Services.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

The job of a sales leader is all about getting the most out of people. I’ve had many people in my life that have pushed me to be the best version of myself, and I’ve tried to do the same for others. The most rewarding career path for me has always been one where I could share what I’ve seen and learned over the years, to help others to reach their potential. As Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Sales at Videolicious, I’m able to invest time into our employees and share my experiences, to help them better themselves in their sales roles. They, in turn, pass that to our customers, empowering them to excel in their role with the help of our video automation technology.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?

Prior to joining Videolicious, I was working at a company where a prospective customer had gone into a deal with another company that offered a similar product. I felt like our company was not given a fair chance, and I actually sent a video to the decision maker, outlining why I believed our product was a better fit. I received feedback from that person a day later, not only complimenting my video but acknowledging that he did not even know that our product could tackle some of the problems I mentioned. While the deal had already gone through with the other company, the video reared his head and it was then I realized the impact video could have.

It was actually a few days later that I was in touch with Videolicious for my current role. After that experience with video in the days prior, it felt very natural to join a company that was transforming video automation from a nice-to-have to a need-to-have for enterprise b2b sales and marketing organizations.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I first got into technology sales, we were taught the old school sales methodology of nine-boxing. My first sales meeting was with a large company and I was talking with a sales leader and he stopped me mid-conversation and asked me, “Are you really nine-boxing me? I just want to know how long this conversation is going to go.” My learning from that was if your approach to things doesn’t seem natural, your intent to help someone isn’t going to be natural either. It took me a long time to be comfortable with myself and in communicating with those that were in senior positions. Once I was more comfortable, I found myself more confident in my approach to sales, which made my conversations less forced and more natural.

Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?

LinkedIn, especially its Sales Navigator, is extremely helpful and effective in increasing business revenue. I posted a video on LinkedIn around 2019 trends for digital optimization and sales, and opened my calendar up for meetings if people were interested in booking some time with me just to discuss the trends. Within the first few hours I had 12 meetings set on my calendar — people are always open to exchanging knowledge and hearing another person’s opinion. LinkedIn is the most powerful platform for connections and business if you understand why you’re utilizing it and can leverage it correctly.

Let’s talk about LinkedIn specifically, now. Can you share 5 ways to leverage LinkedIn to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.

1. Understand the power of your network. Having 50 of the right contacts is better than having 10,000 of the wrong ones. There is a reason you are on LinkedIn, and you have to craft your network that way. Connections you’re unfamiliar with may post things you don’t want to be associated with. Don’t accept people just to increase your number — do your homework and understand why you want them to be a part of your network.
2. Let your employees be themselves, while representing a company. Instead of having employees brand themselves as someone who works for the company, help them to brand themselves alongside the company. Give employees a content strategy — what you want the world to know about the company through their eyes — and make it easy to follow. This can be as simple as sending a sample post for them to share on LinkedIn.
3. Use video. Whether it’s to express your thoughts on a current event or new research, share your experience at a trade show or give a tour of your new office, showcase your ‘human’ on your LinkedIn. This will help to build deeper relationships with your connections — you’re no longer just a profile they’re connected to, you’re a real human with a personality and knowledge to share.
4. Leverage LinkedIn for business communications and as a selling channel. There is an immense amount of opportunities that businesses can gain through LinkedIn — all correspondence doesn’t have to be done through email.
5. Commit to it. If you’re going to use LinkedIn for business, you cannot just be on the platform liking what others post — by doing that you’re just regurgitating what others are saying. You need to post content, be a thought leader, and engage with in conversations. It’s also important to have a pathway for others to be an advocate for you, it could be as easy as re-sharing content, to put you in a position to expand your network.

Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Bringing people in touch with their ‘human’ again. There’s so much technology today that has taken the place of human contact, even in everyday tasks like checking out at the grocery shopping. And for businesses, the personalization that’s being implemented by sales and marketing automation doesn’t go much further than a first name. Allowing a buyer to experience the human behind a seller is a core differentiator today. We need to bring businesses back to humanization, and we can start through video. If you can’t meet face-to-face with someone, video still allows for that human contact where sellers can provide their knowledge, personality, and a smile. This is a core tenet of Videolicious’ video automation platform; we’re offering enterprise b2b sales and marketing organizations a way to bring their humanization — the ultimate form of personalization — back into their communications.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

I would love have lunch with Tiger Woods because I’m a big golfer, but what he has can be found in many professional athletes. He sees the bigger picture and sets his goal, and time after time again gets himself there with his ability to break down his big goal, into smaller goals. He puts all his focus into achieving each small step and he doesn’t let any distractions get in his way as he reaches it. I think it would be very interesting to understand this skill set, and interpret it into a sales role.

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening.