Episode 220: 10 LinkedIn Questions Sales Professionals Have Asked Me!

Brynne Tillman  00:00

Hello, Welcome to Making Sales Social. We had a fun one. Today, I’m actually answering 10 questions that were asked by sales professionals.

Bob Woods  00:13

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! This is the recorded version of our weekly Making Sales Social Live Show. 

Brynne Tillman  00:36

So, I’m Brynne Tillman. Welcome again to Making Sales Social glad that you are here. We’re gonna start with the one question that I get, which is ultimately, how can I use LinkedIn to find potential leads or prospects? Hands down! That is the number one question that I’m getting. So let’s talk about it, there are definitely a few ways to do this. The first thing you need to do is make sure that we are connected to all our in person, real people on LinkedIn, that is absolutely the first thing we need to do. So go through your CRM, go through your business cards with the rubber bands around them in the corner of your desk, go through all of those valuable areas for sure. 

You have your prospects, your networking partners in your client contact information, and connect with them on LinkedIn. Also, make sure you’re following their company page as well. Really important. So now that we’ve connected with everyone, we want to take inventory. So when prospecting on LinkedIn, the first thing we want to do is look at everyone that we’re already connected to and identify if those are people that we’d like to have conversations with, whether they’re prospects, or influencers, or networking partners, or past clients that might be able to refer or,  even vendors that sell to your buyer that are non-competitors. 

So you want to export your connections on LinkedIn, or search, which by the way, the free LinkedIn as pretty darn good searches. If you go up to the search bar and hit Enter, you’re gonna see all kinds of fun filters. And if you click on all filters, you can really drill down. So take a look at who you are already connected to, and categorize your prospects, your clients, and your centers of influence in your referral partners, and make sure that you look at who you already know, now we want to reach out in ways that are meaningful to them. So we’ll go deeper in future videos, and we’ve gotten deeper before. 

But really, once we’ve identified what we want to do, we want to start conversations with our referral partners around how we can help one another with clients or past clients. We don’t necessarily always jump into, hey, I want a referral. But what can we do to start a conversation with them that’s meaningful to them? And we can lead to the opportunity where we could possibly ask for referrals. If we have active clients that are really happy, we can just reach out to them and say, “Hey, Mr. Client, I noticed you’re connected to a few people on LinkedIn, I’d love to get in front of can I run those names by you.” And then those referral partners set up one Zoom or in person coffee meeting, once a week. 

Invite them to look through your connections, you look through their connections and make some meaningful introductions. So that is the number one question that I get all the time around. How do I use LinkedIn to prospect? The next one is the LinkedIn premium worth the investment for sales professionals? This is an interesting question. I’m going to make it short. I believe Sales Navigator is one of the most powerful tools on the planet today for salespeople. I don’t recommend a normal premium if you’re going to invest, invest in Sales Navigator. There are many reasons why but the number one reason are triggers. 

You can follow your prospects, you can buyer map them out, you can follow those accounts. And every single day, LinkedIn will share with you opportunities to start sales conversations. Yes, you get a newsfeed customized to you in the Sales Navigator that will say “Hey, this person moved jobs.” “This person was promoted to this person’s shared content that gives you an opportunity to engage on and a reason to start a conversation.” So the answer is Sales Navigator. absolutely hands down and bonus on that there are levels of Sales Navigator, the core Sales Navigator is the lowest. The first advance is considered for teams. But you can have a one-person team. 

And you get a feature called Smart Links, which to me is one of the most valuable tools in the toolkit. You can upload video content, link to things. And when someone clicks through, you can see how long they were there did they downloaded it and it is a wonderful lead generation tool. Number three, how can I approach a potential lead without seeming too aggressive or spammy? This is a great one. And we want to start with detaching from what the prospect is worth to you, and attached to what you are worth to the prospect. What this means is our intentions need to shift, we need to be a resource, we need to make sure that we are out there bringing value to our prospects and our influencers in our network that were seen as someone who is worth the time right.

We need to earn the right to get sales conversations. And the way we do that is by bringing great value. So too aggressive is the Connect and Pitch, When you are telling them how you can help them. It’s too aggressive. When you’re actually helping them, you’re earning the right to get conversations. Remember, this is about really building trust and credibility, earning the right to get the sales call, we need to slow down our outreach to speed up our outcome. Number four, what’s the best way to optimize my LinkedIn profile for sales? Well, we’re going to continue that same conversation, which is detach from your selling and attach from your giving your thought leadership, your resource, make sure that your profile is this landing page of nuggets, that when your buyers get here, they learn so much.

They can’t wait to get on a call with you because they know if they can learn this in their profile. Imagine what they’re going to get when they get on the call with you. So make sure you convert your profile from a resume to a resource resource. Number five, how frequently should I post or engage with content on LinkedIn to stay visible to my network? Well, first of all sales folks, I want you to consider engaging as much as possible three, four or five times a day in Sales Navigator, you’re going to be fed the content to engage on because that’s going to be content that your prospects are sharing in the free LinkedIn, you can go ahead and ring the bell of your prospects on their profile.

 And when they share content, it will come into your notifications. Now, if you ring their bell on desktop, you’re gonna get what they say is not all the content, but kind of the best content. And I’m not sure how LinkedIn is deciding that. So I highly recommend that we ring the bell on mobile, because you get to decide if you want to see all your content. And honestly, if you are prospecting someone, I want to see all their content, I want the best piece for me to engage on and start a conversation. So powerful. So the question is how often should I engage, I would say five or more times a day you should be engaging with the right people. Now how often I should post this is hard for a lot of folks.

 But there are two kinds of posting, there’s curated posts where we went out and found content or took content from our company page, or from an industry insight or YouTube or we got someone else’s content. We’re sharing it. And we’re putting in our own thoughts. This is great as long as it’s leading to your solution. And it’s of value to your prospects. So you don’t have to come up with original content all the time. But you do on occasion need to come up with original content. And if you come up with original content, there are so many tools today that can make it so simple for you. I highly recommend you get on a Zoom, you record yourself for two or three minutes. 

You grab that transcript, you stick it in Chat GPT and say create a blog post or a LinkedIn post with 2000 characters or less including spaces and use only this transcript do not research. And now you’ve got some original content. If you can Do that once a week, that’s fabulous. You can even turn that content into polls and other things on LinkedIn, literally three minutes of recording a topic on zoom with the transcript can give you all the original content you need. So if you can do it once a week, that’s great. The next one is how can i It’s number six, how can I use LinkedIn analytics to refine my sales strategy. So if you’ve got a premium, you can see some LinkedIn analytics. 

And a lot of people are really interested in this. What I’m most interested in when it comes to analytics is what kind of content is really working for you and which content is attracting the right people. So your LinkedIn analytics, when you have a premium, lives in a little banner at the top of your profile. So when you are on your profile, and you look at the very top, you’ll see profile visitors and then a little arrow that says View All analytics. Now, on the free LinkedIn, you don’t get a lot. It’s really barely anything. But when you have any kind of premium beyond politics, you can be injured. But I’m going to say take it first with a grain of salt. One of the things you’re going to see in our post impressions, and it’s going to give you the last seven days, it’s going to show you how many in mind go up and down like a roller coaster. 

We’ll also see how many followers you have profile viewers, I think have the best analytics, right. So if you’ve got a lot of content, that’s good, good enough to check out your profile. That’s a really great look at who’s checking out your profile, and search appearances. Now that’s gonna come back to the content and the SEO value in the search engine optimized value of your profile. But I want to see how many searches I come up in because I think that brings a lot of value. So do I think that this analytics is to die for now. But when I noticed that I posted this week, my impressions were really low. I want to find out why. And if I post next week, and my impressions are really high, I want to know why? Because I want to repeat that. Right? So really important. Really, really important. 

Number seven, how do I keep track of my connections and interactions on LinkedIn, this is a powerful question. And really important. In Sales Navigator, I put them in categories. But you really should have a CRM, there are wonderful ones out there simple ones, like nimble Pipedrive is a great one. And even if you are in an old fashioned Excel spreadsheet, not my favorite, but it can work. And I have a client who uses Trello, which is sort of a project management tool, and keeps track of their prospects that way. The other thing is if you have Google, there are plugins that create tasks and reminders. So you can link someone’s URL, LinkedIn URL to a reminder task to come up for you. So there are lots of ways to do this. Some are very inexpensive, but it’s really important.

I’m, this is something that I need to work on even more, right, which is, how do I really keep a good cadence around my outreach. And so find a way to do this, that’s good for you. Again, there are free tools out there, you can use your calendar, I have one client that has every single day or recurring calendar for from seven to 8am. And we’ll open it up and put in notes a week from now with a LinkedIn URL and notes on that person. So every day, she pulls up her calendar link and knows what you know what she needs to do there. And that’s totally free and available to do. But the most important thing is if you are using this for sales, come up with a way to track and stay in touch. 

Number eight, should I use LinkedIn groups? And how will it benefit my sales? This is a sticky question for me. My partner Jack Hubbard, the modern banker, absolutely loves groups and gets wonderful engagement from groups where I really like groups. If you have Sales Navigator, you can search by certain groups and other filters. I think groups might be having a comeback. But what’s great about groups is that if you sell to a persona that is you know, let’s say they’re you sell to bankers, and they have huge groups of bankers, the challenge is getting engagement in those groups? So do I think they work, I think they can work, they take a little more time.

If you have a Sales Navigator, I think groups can really work on your behalf. But simply sharing your content in groups a couple of times a month, will give you visibility with the network of your choice. And that was number eight. Number nine, how can I leverage LinkedIn content platform to position myself as a thought leader, and industry expert. Now we touched a little bit of this when we talked about engaging in content. But let’s go back and do a deeper dive on original content. The way you show up as a thought leader, and subject matter expert is with original content, original content. Again, if we go back, I’m done. No, I’m repeating myself. 

But it’s an important one, go and record yourself three to five minutes every single week, or on Zoom. Just whether it’s you know, you’re inspired by an answer that you gave a client like you capture your genius, grab that transcript. So now you have that video. There are so many even AI tools right now that can edit videos like that. But you can upload that live video, it’s fine. You can see I’m just sort of chatting here today, right? Like, there’s just it’s you don’t have to have it highly modified or edited. That’s the word. That’s the word edited. You don’t need it highly edited to be good. You could be out there just winging it like I am right now. And it’s fine, right? People just want to learn and get good value. 

So now you have that video, do a poll once a week based on the topic. If you feel comfortable, do a Canva Quote, they’re so easy to do. canva.com is the best, easiest platform on so many levels. The bottom line is bring value to your network. The last thing I’ll say is if you really want to bring value to your network, or to your prospects in your buyers, start interviewing them. Whether you do it on the live, we do it in making sales, social interview other people in the industry, whether they’re your prospects or other subject matter experts to expand your network, into their network, and to be seen as a thought leader in their network, even if you’re interviewing them. 

With the right questions and the right conversation, you’re definitely sharing your insights. So the number 10 question. I don’t know if it’s the 10th. Most This is not in any particular order. But the number, I guess one of the top 10 questions that I get all the time is what should I do on a daily basis? How do I get started? What do I do? Well, for that we have a little ebook, which is socialsaleslink.com/day. That’s going to give you a day in the life of a social seller that will take you through checking notifications, accepting invitations and what to say, going through celebrations and what to say. So number 10, is what I do on a daily basis, go to socialsaleslead.com/day To download your day in the life of a social seller and I have one other we have a ton of people on. 

This was in the beginning originally to remember how excellent your knowledge and ability to communicate this information was when we did our live session. I loved that. Go see, Brynne social selling under present. Thank you, Jeffrey. Well, we went through our top 10 questions that I’m getting from clients on LinkedIn. And I’m really glad that you were able to join us today join me today Bob is on vacation in St. Lucia having a blast. And so I will end this not as eloquently as he does. But if you’re listening to this in replay, subscribe or follow us on your favorite channel. 

And if you’re watching us on LinkedIn and you want to see more of this, go to my profile and click the bell and the question is to send the link again. You know, I am going to put it up. Let me see if I can do this day in the life and I’m going to do HTTPS. I’m gonna do it really really really quickly. All right, let’s see here. We got socialsaleslink.com/day Hopefully you’re getting to that let me know if you’re not. So guys, thanks so much for tuning in. I had so much fun. I hope you did too. And we will See you next time.

 Bob Woods  20:08

Don’t miss an episode, visit socialsaleslink.com/podcast. Leave a review down below. Tell us what you think, what you learned, and what you want to hear from us next, register for free resources at LinkedInlibrary.com You can also listen to us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play. Visit our website socialsaleslink.com for more information.