Episode 120: Giving and Receiving Recommendations on LinkedIn

Bob Woods 0:00

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to Making Sales Social Live. I’m Bob Woods and I’m here with my co-host, the LinkedIn Whisperer Brynne Tillman. How are you today, Brynne?

Brynne Tillman 0:10

I am good, Bob. Great to be here with you.

Bob Woods 0:13

Yeah, yes, it’s fantastic, especially because we’ve got another great show with a feature that’s overlooked — I don’t know if I’d say often, but I think it’s overlooked enough by LinkedIn users, and that’s recommendations.

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live, as we share LinkedIn and social selling training, strategies, and tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, every week. Making Sales Social Live.

How else can one prove not only that they are, you know, who they say they are and can do what they say they can do but they’re really good at what they do as well. The answer is recommendations from other people. Now, if you don’t already know, LinkedIn provides its users with ways to both give and receive recommendations. This lets others speak to your successes as well as the differences you and your company made to their operations or however you brought value to them, and why they loved to work with you.

So before we get into the actual giving and receiving, let’s talk about the big advantages of having recommendations in your profile. And there’s two that I can think of Brynne and that’s social proof and reducing the time of your sales cycle.

Brynne Tillman 1:35

Yeah, absolutely. So let’s just start off with the concept. We can go both directions, right. So the first (crosstalk), let’s start with reducing the sales cycle, because that’s the big one. That’s the one we teach often. In the olden days, pre-LinkedIn, we would get have a really great conversation with our prospects, we get the proposal out there, they would say, “This looks great. We’re ready to go but can I talk to two or three of your clients first, just to make sure?” You know, the old saying is no one got fired for hiring IBM? When someone hires you, it’s their reputation. When they bring you on as a vendor, especially in a little bit of a larger organization where the CEO may not even be touching the buy, it’s their reputation at stake. So they want to make sure that they are vetting as the best as possible. And asking to talk to your previous clients and find out their experiences for them is one of the best ways to feel confident that they’re choosing well.

Here’s the sticker, at least it’s been for me and my time is when they ask you “Who can I speak to?” and you know, we’ve got our three or four people lined up, great and with it, you make some introductions, and maybe a week goes by before they even have the conversation. And then the excitement of the buy starts to fizzle out, you know, and you go, gosh, you know, they were all excited, they were all up there, and other objections inside of the organization may have popped up in that week. And, you know, and so when we elongate or we make that final decision over a longer period of time because they’re waiting to talk to someone, it can really hurt the deal. That’s where your recommendations come in. Right? This is perfect.

So this is what I might say, “Bob, I’m so excited to be working with you. I’m glad that we’re going to be moving forward. To confirm that, there are so many people that I’ve worked with over the years, what I’m going to invite you to do…” Don’t say I’m going to ask you to do this because if I’m going to ask you to do this, it’s your work. What I invite you to do this, it’s a gift, right? So, “…what I’m going to invite you to do is take a look at the recommendations that I have on LinkedIn. And if there’s anyone specifically that you’d like to talk to, I can try to make that happen.”

Now, here’s a few things that have, right, so they look if you’ve got dozens, right, they read through, they click through, they see these are real people and all of a sudden, they go, “You know what, this is enough. If this many people are saying it, you can’t fake it, you can’t make it up.” It’s not… (Bob: Right.) It connects to their profile name. They had to have put it up there for that to be, for it to be valid. So I think that’s huge.

I want to get into in a minute. I’m going to let you talk about the social credibility in a minute. But what I after that I want to talk about how do you ask for those recommendations because sometimes it’s awkward. So you go into number two with social credibility and then you can throw it back to me.

Bob Woods 4:43

Yeah, yeah, social proof. And I think social credibility is another really good way to put it because of what you just said about faking it. I mean, people can publish all kinds of content, may not necessarily come from them or whatever but there’s a lot of ways that that can be manipulated so that people can seem like they’re an expert. But if they’re not either working with people just overall in general, unless you’re just starting out, and that’s a little bit of a different situation, obviously, but if you pretend to be someone who is an expert in your field, you probably should have people who are stark raving fans of yours and want to talk up your praises on LinkedIn.

So I mean, so even if you’re out there publishing content, you can still kind of not be very good at what you do. And that’s where the social proof comes in. Because you can say, you know, “Hey, I’ve got all of these people who were willing to, you know, vouch for me, and I brought this up in a couple of other podcast episodes, but you know, it’s kind of like the old stereotypical mafia movies, where you, you know, you vouch for someone, and if they screw up, then you get in — but anyhow, it’s that type of thing overall.

So you’ve got other people vouching for you saying that you are who you say you are and that you’re really good at what you do. So that’s like, the ultimate to me in social proof is to have those recommendations. And again, LinkedIn provides this, you might as well take care of it or take advantage of it.

Brynne Tillman 6:11

Yeah, you know, here’s, the other thing too. When you see recommendation after recommendation after recommendation on someone’s profile, especially when by the way, they’re random dates, they’re, you know, someone actually put in comments here, Don: “Is actual recommendations down with recommendations parties.” So I’ve never heard of a recommendation party but here’s what I think it is: 25 people decided we’re gonna give each other recommendations and it’s kind of icky. That’s what it sounds like, right? Like they never worked together. It’s like, “Hey.” (Bob: Yeah.) These are from real clients, people that have truly experienced, and you want to talk about a few things inside of a recommendation, by the way, and this is, when we talk about, I’ll move into how to ask for recommendation but I want you to think about, there are a few things.

Number one, what was the challenge that you were facing? Why did you pick that person when you hired them? How did they help you with that challenge? Like, what did they actually do? And what were the results that you got? Because you worked with them? And when you can include that, now, that is as legit of a recommendation as you can possibly get because it’s very clear.

The other thing is you want to find clients that have a challenge that you saw over and over and over again. For us, you know, I’m on LinkedIn, but I can’t get conversations. That’s the challenge. Right? So why did they choose us? Because we got lots of great content, we felt confident based on what we were hearing that they understood our problem, right? And then what did we do? We did the 12-week training program, they went to eight team coaching sessions, they had a workflow specifically for X, Y, and Z. And the results were they were on, you know, 15 prospecting conversations after three months that turned into three pieces of business. That, if you can write that out, I mean, that was not a real scenario, I was just using that — for the record, I was just using it as an example. But when you can lay it out that way, when you can say, you know, here’s the challenge, here’s why I picked them, here’s what they did for us, here are the results we brought to the table, that is a recommendation that will help you convert more business.

How do you ask for it? You know, there are lots of times when you are talking to your client, they’re like, “Oh, my God, Bob, you did such a crazy good job on our profiles. I cannot believe how happy our employees are, they are blown away. And you were so easy to work with. You just made it seamless. Thank you so much.” Now about this, here’s an opportunity. You know what, we’re so glad, I’m so glad that we were able to exceed your expectations. “I don’t know if you know this, but we grow our business from our reputation and recommendations on LinkedIn is one way we do this. Would you be open if I kind of capture what you just said and put a little paragraph together? Would you be open to using that in a recommendation on my LinkedIn?”

I would ask them in a backup, you could actually say to them, “Would you be open to writing a recommendation on LinkedIn? And if it makes it easier for you, I’m happy to write it up and send that over to you.” So, it’s as simple as that. Try not to make them write it, try to capture their words and write it for them, and they’re just going to copy and they’re going to paste it and go through, take inventory. If you helped a client two years ago, you can still get a recommendation for them. We’ve got lots of comments coming in. Gunnar: “Some companies have a policy of not endorsing suppliers. How do you approach those solutions?” That’s a great question. If you run into that, you know I would say, I mean, there may not be much that you can do specifically, um, you can still get general, this is where you get like the general, you know, “As a Fortune 100 company, we hired Social Sales Link to… – Chris P.” Right? You don’t have their name. I don’t think it has the same impact. I mean, do I, what I like ultimately to get introductions out? Yeah, that would be great.

In fact, one of the things — this just spurred in my head — a company that Bob and I worked for a long time ago — not a long time ago. In their contract, it said that we can use their logo name and you know, and today, they actually have to cross that out. So contractually, we were asking for permission to be able to use their logo on our website and all the other places. So I think maybe getting ahead of it with something like that could be helpful but you know, if they say no, they say, no.

Don: “I’ve had several people connect and then tell me they’ll recommend and endorse my skills.” Yuck.

Bob Woods 11:00

Yeah, that’s yuck. Major yuck.

Brynne Tillman 11:03

Major yuck. Here’s the thing, like, well, first of all, don’t ever endorse anyone just for the heck of it. One of the things we do in nurturing our connections, we talk about endorsing them, and we talk about recommending them, but only when you truly experienced it. Right? Like you, giving kudos to someone. That’s another thing that you can do, only when it’s authentic.

The other thing is, I never want someone to come back to me and say, “Hey, I saw that you recommended George, we hired him and it was terrible.” (Bob: Terrible.) We saw that you en— recommendation’s even worse than the endorsement. Endorsement you could kind of get away with but if you said, “George is great.” And then George wasn’t great. And you’ve hurt your own credibility.

Bob Woods 11:52

Yeah. And that goes back to that stereotypical mafia thing that you’re talking about. I mean, you definitely wouldn’t recommend someone into the mafia, if you didn’t know for sure that they could do what they could do. This is, obviously, it’s not a life or death situation but it’s the same thing when it comes to your reputation.

Brynne Tillman 12:09

It’s your (unintelligible) the life and death of your (unintelligible). So, big shout out and hugs to Gunnar Hood, man. You guys, anyone listening, go follow Gunnar Hood. I learn from him every frickin time. Listen to this. So he’s the one that asked, what do you do when you’re not allowed to get endorsed by, when the vendor can endorse you in those situations? How about reversing it, recommending the client and said about how great they were to work with. Gunnar, five friggin stars for you, my friend! I’m giving you a virtual hug.

Bob Woods 12:44

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Especially because that’s what we’re going to be talking about next. So that is a great lead in into giving recommendations.

Brynne Tillman 12:55

All right, well, let’s do it.

Bob Woods 12:56

Let’s do it. So actually, I’ve got a couple of bullet points here. My first one, swear to God, and hand in hand on the Bible, whatever you want to say, offer to give people giving them to you. And because you’ve worked together, you should be able to put together something just as nice as the person who gave it to you. And like Gunnar said in the situation that he described, if they can’t give you one, so what it, doesn’t matter, you still work with that other person. You really should be able to write a recommendation for them that’s glowing and everything else. And you know, it may help you down the line, it may not. Who knows it doesn’t matter. Be authentic, be genuine about it.

Brynne Tillman 13:41

Yeah. And also take a look. So someone asked me to write them a recommendation, and I experienced them and it was a relatively good experience. And I went and he had like 25 recommendations and he hadn’t given one. And that really sat with me wrong. Like you really did. I’m like, so I reached out to him and I said to him, because I have a friendship, I said when you give three recommendations, come back and I’ll recommend. And I told him,(unintelligible) will recommend.

Bob Woods 14:12

I love it. That’s great.

Brynne Tillman 14:15

So like that’s icky. So make sure that you are recommending as well. Think about who did you buy from? Whom did you learn from? What book? What author did you read and learn from? What podcast did you listen to that gave you some implementable tactical insights that you could use in your business? Go recommend them on LinkedIn. I mean it’s amazing and they will love you for it. You can also do an Amazon review and other things but if you do it on LinkedIn and and by the way, that’s a reason to connect with them. Do it on Amazon, let them know “Hey, Bob, loved your book. Recommended you on Amazon. If you’re open to connecting I’ll put the recommendation link in as well, now you’re connected with influencers. (Bob: Absolutely.) All fun things. You know, I’m like going down the spiral staircase here with all the thoughts (unintelligible) around.

Bob Woods 15:10

No, that’s okay. That’s great. That’s why people come here. So that’s, (crosstalk) (Brynne: Watch me spiral out.) Not for the spiraling part, for the information part.

The other thing that I want to bring up really quick is that when you write a recommendation for people you know well but you haven’t spoken to in a while, you know, depending on who it is, it can actually renew a referral relationship, possibly spark a new sales conversation, like that type of things. So I mean, not only is it — I shouldn’t say not only — it’s, you know, it’s one thing to just dump a quick message into LinkedIn saying, “Hey, we haven’t talked in a while…” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah but when you’re writing a recommendation form that shows additional care. That shows that you’re really thinking about them, you’re really thinking about the situation. So you’re going in with the deeper degree of trust and authenticity there. So you know, so like Brynne said, take inventory. If you haven’t spoken to these people in a while, but yet you knew them back then and everything else, still go ahead and do it. You know, who knows what could come out of that type of thing?

Brynne Tillman 16:14

No, I love that. Let’s go back to that, take inventory, which I know we’ve done lots of episodes on. But ultimately, you want to identify who in your network you’ve been ignoring. And if there are people in your network that you identify that have helped you or that you’ve worked with, I love this. This is another recommendation. I don’t even know that we talk a lot about it. Generally, (crosstalk) I have talked about endorsing someone but recommendations, that is at a whole other level, like people are really touched and honored. I love that. Love that, Love that. 

The other thing when writing a recommendation. So who do we want to write it for? Right? So we talked about, client is a great person, someone that was amazing to work with someone that helped you to implement, by the way, you could talk about all the things that you did with them. So that’s out there, too. And by the way, (unintelligible) my mind is exploding, Gunnar Hood. The other thing is now, when people are looking and vetting that person, and they’re looking at their recommendations, you’re everywhere you’re on all of it, because most people are going to look at how they’ve been recommended, not, you know, not who they’ve recommended. Right? So the first line is the people that recommended them. So they’re reading through LinkedIn and you recommend your client, and it’s screaming that you worked with them. Oh, my gosh, this is so exciting. So you’re showing up in so many places, what an incredible opportunity right there.

Referral partners. If if you got referred business that closed, recommend them and thank them in public. I mean, you could thank anyone that has brought you value — a co-worker, even internally, right. If you worked with coworkers, if you maybe worked with another vendor, like occasionally a marketing company will bring us on to partner  into their client, you know, that partner you can recommend. So think about anyone that is bringing value into your professional world as someone probably worth recommending. In fact, when I get off this live today, I’m going to recommend Gunnar Hood.

Bob Woods 18:35

Excellent one. I will too, that sounds — well, no. I will wait a week or two to recommend. Yeah. Yeah, because again, if you have a whole bunch of recommendations coming in at the exact same time or within a day or two of each other, it looks sus. It looks suspicious. So definitely spaced them out. Somewhat so. So with that, I think we’re going to take it home.

Thanks again for joining us on Making Sales Social Live. If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, or Twitter right now, we do this every week, so keep an eye out for those live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast, it means you’ve listened to us recorded but if you haven’t subscribed already, hit that Subscribe or Follow button to access all of our previous shows. You’ll learn so much from our previous shows and be alerted to when new ones drop.

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Brynne Tillman 19:51

Social. Thanks everybody. (Brynne: Bye guys) Bye-bye.

Bob Woods 19:54

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