Episode 249: 7 LinkedIn Strategies to Start 2024 Right

Bob Woods  00:00

Welcome one and all in one or something like that to Making Sales Social Live, Coming to you from the social sales like virtual studios. I’m Bob Woods of Social Sales Link. Some call me the LinkedIn Sherpa, and in the Co-hosts seat with me are next to me, or wait a second with that being with me.

Brynne Tillman  00:43

You’re virtually with each other. 

Bob Woods  00:45

Yeah, that’s true. That’s true, but you’re not physically in the seat with me. So I’ll figure that out later but she is a fellow SSL and a LinkedIn and social selling strategy trainer and coach on her own. She’s also known as the LinkedIn whisperer. Brynne Tillman, How’re you doing today, Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  00:43

Bob, I’m always good when I’m live with you.

Intro 00:49

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. 

Bob Woods  00:00

And we are live. And Stuart already has a hashtag for the best day of my life. We appreciate that. I’m assuming you’re talking about us and not something else. We’re talking about something that’s fantastic.

Brynne Tillman  01:24

You know, he has a Bart Simpson. Picture. 

Bob Woods  01:29

Oh, grinding style. Yeah.

Brynne Tillman  01:31

However, the best day is SpongeBob. So we’re little.

Bob Woods  01:39

See, I don’t watch Spongebob. So I know that and I realized that with me, I should watch the names. I should watch. SpongeBob. But you know, there’s only so many.

Brynne Tillman  01:51

SpongeBob is an awesome show.

Bob Woods  01:54

I’ve heard that so often.  

Brynne Tillman  01:57

Simpsons, right? Like, I don’t know. It’s really funny. Anyway, I was fortunate to raise children in the SpongeBob age.

Bob Woods  02:05

Oh, good. Yeah, that’s Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, you would have Yeah, yep.

Brynne Tillman  02:09

Anyway, moving on.

Bob Woods  02:11

Moving on. Yeah. So I mean, Seriously can you believe it’s almost 2024. Now you just I can’t No, yeah, no, not even close. And if you’re listening to the podcast version of this episode, we’re in the future because our future for us. But for you, it’s just now 2024. So it’s the perfect time to look at either starting or improving what you do on LinkedIn to begin those sales conversations to close deals, get additional business from current clients and network with fellow professionals. 

Today, Brynne and I will share seven strategies that will help you exceed even the most audacious goals you have for the upcoming New Year. And hopefully, they are all audacious. So Brynne got anything before we delve into the specific strategies?

Brynne Tillman  03:01

 Yeah, I don’t know how to spell Audacious.

Bob Woods  03:03

Ah, A-U-D-A-C-I-O-U-S.

Brynne Tillman  03:08

All right, well, and we’ll have a transcript.

Bob Woods  03:10

And we’ll have a transcript.

Brynne Tillman  03:14

So, let’s dive-in. I’m really excited because we spent a good 11 minutes coming up with this list, Bob?

Bob Woods  03:20

Yes, we did. So hopefully, it will take at least that long to actually do this. So number one, and one of my favorites. Just because everything. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said this, but it’s true. Every single thing you do on LinkedIn brings people back to your profile. So revisit your profile. It’s really easy, but it’s not at the same time, depending on the condition of your profile.

Brynne Tillman  03:47

Yeah, so here, I’m gonna just kind of I’m gonna go through my quick things and then you’ll tell me what I forgot. So make sure that your banner is clear. So there was a time where you could upload a banner and it was fuzzy did it?

Bob Woods  04:05

Yeah.

Brynne Tillman  04:06

Didn’t get fixed but every once in a while I see someone with a fuzzy banner where and I’m like, I know exactly the time that you uploaded this. So if you are a fuzzy banner victim, it’s time to upload your background banner.

Bob Woods  04:21

Yep because you enter a fuzzy banner that that one hit wonder band from the 90s.

Brynne Tillman  04:28

Oh, that would be a good name. So that the other thing is looking at your photo does it match what you see in the mirror?

Bob Woods  04:37

Yep. 100%.

Brynne Tillman  04:40

If it doesn’t change it. Yep. Headline. Do you have a compelling headline? That when your prospects buyers clients referral partners get to your profile, you have resonated with them? They go oh, they work with me. You create then you’ve created enough curiosity that leads to them to your solution to the point where they’re like, I want to keep reading. If it doesn’t, it’s time to relook at that, who you got, what you tell the formula.

Bob Woods  05:16

Who you help, how you help them, the services you provide, and the results that you bring.

Brynne Tillman  05:22

Like, drop, okay, update your headline, if it doesn’t meet Bob’s criteria, it’s time to review and fix lots of other things. Is the content in your featured section? New or is it a year or two old? Right, once I will look at something and I will see content that is outdated and not even relevant to what the person does anymore? 

Bob Woods  05:49

Yeah, especially that Yeah, I mean, yeah, when it comes to the really, really quickly, think of the LinkedIn profile. All right, I’m sorry, think of the LinkedIn Features section, like a produce section. Get the old stuff out? 

Brynne Tillman  06:01

Oh.

Bob Woods  06:02

That ain’t gonna sell. 

Brynne Tillman  06:04

I want a whole grocery store aisle thing. Like, what’s pasta? 

Bob Woods  06:08

Yep. Oh yeah.

Brynne Tillman  06:09

That’s, you know, the Hardy founder should have some fun with that. 

Bob Woods  06:11

Figure that out later. But yeah, but yeah, the featured section is your produce section, man, it’s got to bring value. And, and it’s got to be the newest freshest stuff that it can possibly be.

Brynne Tillman  06:26

Yeah. And although we could go through, this isn’t a whole profile thing. But we go through the about section, the experience section, here’s two things, I’m going to say check your skills, make sure they’re all relevant. And make sure that you’re including the skills that people are going to use when they’re searching for your service or product. And look at your recommendations. If the last recommendation you have is from 2021, it’s time to get more recommendations. If the last recommendation you’ve given is from 2021, it’s time to give somewhere.

Bob Woods  06:55

It’s time. And just so you know, next week, we are talking specifically about the profile for 2024. So if you’re thinking you might need a little help with that, stick around, because next week, we will dive specifically into that.

Brynne Tillman  07:10

So I’m going to Yes, and that comes with your profile questions. And if you’re adding them into comments, we can specifically answer your questions to help you position yourself perfect.

Bob Woods  07:27

For people who and that’s for people who attend the live. If you’re on the recorded podcast version, obviously, you can just listen and learn, Number.

Brynne Tillman  07:34

Wait, wait, wait, wait, they can sign up for socialsaleslink.com/library and ask your questions in our community.

Bob Woods  07:45

That’s even better. Love that. And we also do have in the library specific content that can also help you with your profile. So yeah, 100% there. Fabulous. Okay, next, now we move on to number two, take inventory. So we’re not talking about the stuff that’s in the back room, that you need to go once a quarter or once a year and take inventory of that stuff. Although you could probably think of it like this. Take inventory of your connections, So.

Brynne Tillman  08:15

Where is your grocery store? Sorry, yeah, exactly.

Bob Woods  08:17

Yeah, yeah, the back room or the basement or wherever they keep that stuff, depending. But important. Yep, absolutely. 100% important. 

Brynne Tillman  08:27

So you can export your connections, or you can actually search your connections. But LinkedIn tells us that every year there’s a 20% turnover. That means that one out of five of the people in your network are at a new job this year, there are new opportunities inside of your network that you are not leveraging right now, I promise because you know what, Bob, and I miss a lot of those too. And we do a good job. 

 Bob Woods  08:50

Everybody, everybody, every buddy is the most seasoned LinkedIn professional. And this is because there’s only so many hours in the day, you have to devote some time specifically to do this, mark it on your calendar, block it out to do it, because otherwise it ain’t gonna get done. Because I know I’m like that. And so you know, no, no judgments, no shame.

Brynne Tillman  09:10

You just gotta do it. Yeah. And so take inventory, put in a column in the left hand side with which you export your connections, put in the column for your prospects, your clients, your referral partners, categorize them, and have a reach out strategy for 2024. There will be lots of people that you have no interested in talking to. And that’s okay, too. But about 10% of your network or people that you’re ignoring that. Had they walked into a room you would have been excited to have a business conversation. 

Bob Woods  09:40

Absolutely. You’re unintentionally ignoring them. I always like to say that because ignoring them sounds like you’re purposely doing it. You’re unintentionally ignoring these people, so don’t feel bad. Just do something about it.

Brynne Tillman  09:50

Because they’re ignoring you too.

Bob Woods  09:54

Yeah, that’s true. And they’re not doing it in a negative way either. It just happens. Now. We’re yes See number three, a little bit. ACS a yes. So why? Yes, account centric selling, what you should do is identify anywhere from 20 to 100 key accounts that you want to get into for 2024. Sounds easy may not be depending on the territory or blah, blah, blah, whatever. 

But it’s crucial that you actually have goals set. Specifically for accounts because people are people but accounts, you can have several people within one account. So you know, and then you should also be expanding within those accounts as well which Brent is going to get into that a little bit more now. 

Brynne Tillman  10:44

So getting that list of accounts, I’m going to make it easy. So assuming you have a network and existing network, you want to obviously take a look at your favorite clients, the best clients, the ones you want more of, identify the industry, the size, company by piece by number of of employees, there are a bunch of even in the free LinkedIn filters that can help you to identify specific companies geographic location. 

So once you’ve identified and matched your existing clients that you want more of to the filters in LinkedIn, you can now add one more filter, which is first degree. So you can build a list of your ideal accounts, based on companies that you already have a connection in. So that is a great way to start your 20 3040 list, it may not get you to 100, but it will definitely get you started. And then you start to map out all the decision makers and influencers inside of the organization.

Bob Woods  11:52

And that’s actually number four maxing out that social proximity within your leads and accounts to figure out if you’re either with the best person to help get you going within the account or even a decision maker or are you a degree away from them. But that person can actually help you get to those people. That’s what that’s part of Mac mapping out saying that three times fast mapping out social proximity. 

Brynne Tillman  12:19

Perfect. So we did get someone that we’re not going to address today that had a question about his LinkedIn headline, bring that next week, and we will take a look.

Bob Woods  12:28

We will absolutely take a look. Number five is what we’re up to though. On our list of top seven, I feel like I’m Beckenham radio, designing a content strategy for your key accounts. So there are several different things that we can do with or several different ways we can do this. I’m just gonna list them here really quick. And then we’ll get into each of them. 

But we’re talking about doing prospecting by interview, original content that resonates, creates curiosity and teaches them something new, that gets them thinking differently, and creates a compelling moment. And my god, the compelling moment is exactly everything is kind of like a funnel. At that point you’re funneling down to create that compelling moment. And you can do that by prospecting by interview. 

Brynne Tillman  13:19

Yeah, so compelling. And by the way, I own almost all social selling content should do what Bob just said. Yeah, everything. Absolutely. But the goal, right, that compelling moment, it moves them from Lurker to engage her. It allows us to see who it is that’s engaging, right? So a compelling moment, might be you know, it’s a call to action of some kind, but it could be as simply they end up engaging, liking, commenting, accepting a connection request asking you to connect, but we need to identify who they are. And that’s what the compelling moment does. Okay. 

So one of the things that we are really stressed about is that we’re seeing incredible success with our clients, we’re still building it out for ourselves, but our clients are seeing great success on this, which is the prospect by interview. So what does this mean? So I’ve identified let’s say, by industry, we are selling to non automotive manufacturing, parts companies. I don’t know why I said that. But let’s just say that. And we’ve identified Yeah, we’ve identified 47 in the country and 19 of them, we already have a first degree connection. So I’m going to start at 19. 

We have a first degree connection in search and identify who in that company we want to interview? And I’m gonna go to my first degree connection and say, “Hey, Bob, I notice that you’re connected to Stan, I’m looking to interview him for an ebook that we’re putting out.” In q1. I’m wondering if you’d be open to introducing. And now we’re leveraging our existing connections to introduce us to a decision maker influencer inside of that organization. Assuming that your first degree connection is not that influencer, if they are fabulous, that’s a great way to do this. 

So we want to interview for 15 minutes on a call, grab their insights, if you do a really good job, you’re also a little bit of discovery in there. So you’re identifying some of their gaps, as well as the insights that you’re going to quote, this is a fabulous way to prospect but there there are definitely steps and stages, ways to ask how to use the content, how to create that content, how to go back to have the conversation, how to take that content, and socially surround their organization and use that content to get in front of others, to prospect by interview, but quite honestly, this is one of the most powerful ways we can leverage content to start conversations.

Bob Woods  16:13

Amazing, amazing stuff. So with that, everything that we’ve been talking about is kind of like one way you to other people. Now we’re going to talk about my god, social, we have to be social with people, how do we do that? “A proper engagement strategy.” So engagement strategies, I mean, you need to be engaging with other people. The best and easiest way to do it, well, not the best, but the easiest way to do it is, is through just commenting on other people’s posts. And doing so in a thoughtful way that also promotes your thought leadership within the post within your comment.

The easiest way to do it, especially because when you do that, when you comment on someone else’s post, you’ll start showing up in their timeline, your content that you post will also show up in their timeline. So besides getting your message out to the people who are first degree of the person that you are commenting on, you’re also going to appear more in their timeline, which is great and can start sales conversations there. And that’s just one way to do an engagement strategy at or this one part, I should say, rather, have an engagement strategy.

Brynne Tillman  17:28

Yeah, well, the other thing, Bob is if you have first degree connections that are prospects go and ring their bell, and you’ll be notified when they share content. If you have a second degree or beyond that you want to follow, or that you want to stay in front of and follow them and then ring their bell, they will be notified that you follow them. But it’s a nice touch. And now when they share content, you don’t have to worry about your newsfeed, it’s coming into your notifications.

Bob Woods  17:58

Absolutely. 

Brynne Tillman  17:28

So yeah, so you want to be very careful, because right now I have way too many bells wrong. And then I’m seeing stuff that I’m not engaging in. So here’s the litmus test. If you see someone three times in your notifications that you don’t engage during the bell.

Bob Woods  18:13

Yep. And we should talk really quick, just in case people don’t know what we mean by ringing the bell if you go to their profile. And then in the top of the fold section, so in other words, just kind of across from and to the right of their headline, you’ll see a little bell, click on that you have rung their bell, it’s really easy to do. But if you don’t know where it’s at, and you know, you’re probably seeing bells on people’s profiles. As you go through LinkedIn, you’re wondering what the heck are those bells for? That’s what they’re for.

Brynne Tillman  18:47

Fabulous. And I just have Debbie Harry in my head now. 

Bob Woods  18:57

That’s not Debbie Harry. Oh, it’s not? No. Regina. Oh, my god help us in the comments. Regina, what’s her name?

Brynne Tillman  19:10

Oh, Anida Ward.

Bob Woods  19:12

Anida Ward. That’s right. Yeah, Anida Ward.

Brynne Tillman  19:15

I’ve been given Debbie and Mary credit for that for so many years. It’s not.

Bob Woods  19:21

Oh, I’m sure you know, she would probably like it and take it although you know. So the final one. We’re gonna actually back up to what we first said our second point about taking inventory. So one of the things that Brynne said when you take inventory is to identify networking partners. And this is something that we are going to be leaning in pretty heavily here. Just for our own business development efforts here at Social Sales Link is utilizing networking partners to help one another so they’re helping us while we’re here. Helping them and that’s important. This isn’t a one way street. So that all ties, you know, so that a high tide rises, you know, raises rises, whatever you want to say all boats rises.

Brynne Tillman  20:10

All boats. Yes. Go with that. 

Bob Woods  20:14

Yep, we’re going to work on them. So yeah, so definitely identify the good networking, either if they are already networking partners or could be potential networking partners, people who are complementary to what it is that you do. And one of the examples that I always give because I was in this one spot of time is like a real estate broker, for example, some of their networking partners would be mortgages would be titles, people would be home inspectors. So I mean start whatever your business is, start thinking along those lines, to identify who you can help and who they can help you with.

Brynne Tillman  20:59

So I’m going to throw in for the 2024 part? 

Bob Woods  21:03

Yes.

Brynne Tillman  21:04

Reach out to one a week, by the end of the year, you will have 52 referral partners, all that are kind of aligned, and you may be able to make some introductions internally to them as well. But really, if you want to make 2024 successful, you have to rely on other relationships. There is no better way to enter a new relationship with a prospect than from another vendor that they already love. So if you know if they have a realtor that they love, and the realtor says, “Hey, use this mortgage person, they’re not going to shop for them.” Right. So build that strong group of referral partners to reach out to one a week. Oh, side note again on that. If you don’t know who to reach out to, and you don’t have a lot on LinkedIn, ask your clients who they use, and then reach out and say, “Hey, we both share a client. I don’t know if you’re open to networking, but I’d love to meet you.”

Bob Woods  22:16

Yeah, that’s fantastic. I like that. You can also chat. You can also ask Chat GPT.

Brynne Tillman  22:22

Oh, that’s true. But Well, that’ll give you who, but the high level.

Bob Woods  22:28

Yeah, not the new ideas. Right. Yeah, that won’t give you actual names, but it will give you know, potential businesses, some that you may not think of I mean, that’s one of the reasons why I like Chat GPT for so many different things. But one of the things that I like is sometimes it surfaces, things that you just don’t think of and you’re just like, “Oh my God, that’s a great idea.” If you even get just one of those, then your little chat session with Chat GPT would be more than worth it at that point.

Brynne Tillman  22:55

I love it. That’s awesome. 

Bob Woods  23:00

Yeah, I’ll wrap it up?

Brynne Tillman  23:02

We are wrapping up. So I just typed in Chat GPT. It’s taking longer than I’m used to. To see that it wouldn’t give you some names. Now this is going to be the highest level of names. That is it but it is. So you can say “Give me a list of the Top X and it actually will pull names.” So I just wanted to be a little clearer on that, that you put out. 

Bob Woods  23:30

Fantastic. That’s fantastic. I would go to catch up myself. But I am maxed out for the next couple of hours on my chat. So I wouldn’t so I physically cannot do that. 

Brynne Tillman  23:40

Oh, that’s funny. 

Bob Woods  23:42

In cyberspace at least Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was messing around and it was the first time that I’ve ever run out of chats. So with that, thank you again for joining us here on Making Sales Social Live. If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or x, formerly known as Twitter right now, we do these every week. So keep an eye out for our live sessions, especially the one next week that we got coming up specifically on the profile for 2024.

If you’re listening to us on our podcast and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and click that subscribe or follow button so you can not only access all of our previous shows you are alerted when new ones drop. If you’d like more info on our podcast, socialsaleslink.com/podcast is where you’re going to want to do and we do two shows weekly. 

We do this one in our making sales social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business and many, many more areas. Some that you wouldn’t necessarily think would be good for you. But we know it is so we talked to those people as well. So when you are out and about Be sure to make your sales.

Brynne Tillman  24:52

Social. 

Bob Woods  24:53

I love that pause. Thanks, everybody. Have a great week. 

Outro  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.