The Rise of the LinkedIn Snake Oil Salesman with Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson

What It Covers

Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson join Sales Gravy to dissect the performative culture plaguing LinkedIn — from rented Lamborghinis and Dubai flexers to fabricated phone calls and unborn children with LinkedIn accounts — while offering concrete guidance on building an authentic professional voice that generates real business.

Key Questions Answered

• •Red Flag Detection: Distrust LinkedIn "experts" who aggressively push courses but show no recent frontline sales activity on their profiles. The loudest voices often haven't touched a cold call in a decade. Real expertise, like that of UK B2B billionaire Dean Forbes, tends to be quiet, accessible through a handful of podcasts, and never packaged into a $997 course.
• •Authenticity Formula: Never post for the sake of posting. Frimston and Thompson operate by a "never refuse the muse" principle — only publish when something genuinely compels you. Forced content produces the hollow, circular language that defines cringe LinkedIn. Treating posts as a personal journey log rather than a personal brand broadcast produces more genuine engagement.
• •Punching Up in Public Commentary: When engaging critically with bad LinkedIn content, apply comedian Jimmy Carr's rule — only punch up, never down. Targeting newer, younger posters risks coming across as bullying. Reserve pointed commentary for seasoned professionals presenting outdated opinions as universal fact, and only post a comment you couldn't make funnier.
• •Subverting Corporate Voice: One technique for balancing professionalism with authenticity is embedding a joke or subversion deep within an otherwise standard LinkedIn post. Readers who skim miss it entirely; engaged readers find it rewarding. This approach maintains a professional surface while signaling genuine personality, creating stronger community engagement than generic agreement-bait posts.
• •Sales as Therapy Methodology: Frimston and Thompson's book argues that the most effective sales techniques originate from therapeutic practice, tracing back to Socratic method and cognitive behavioral therapy. Rather than pitching bronze, silver, or gold packages, skilled salespeople guide prospects into deeper thinking that surfaces genuine emotion — the same mechanism therapists use without a sales agenda attached.