Episode 353: 3 Easy Steps to Get Your Prospect’s Radar
Bob Woods and Stan Robinson Jr. explore strategies for capturing prospects’ attention on LinkedIn without being salesy. They outline three steps: viewing profiles strategically, following versus connecting and engaging thoughtfully with substantive comments. Emphasizing relationship-building, they warn against the pitfalls of insincere interactions and AI-generated comments, advocating for genuine connection. The episode encourages listeners to focus on adding value and staying memorable, tapping into LinkedIn’s capabilities for fostering meaningful professional relationships. Join the conversation to master the art of subtle yet impactful LinkedIn engagement.
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Intro
Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast, featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, Stan Robinson, Junior, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies. Our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. Enjoy the show. It’s time for Making Sales Social Live coming to you from the social sales link and virtual studios.
0:01:13 – (Bob Woods): How are you doing today, Stan?
0:01:14 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Great, thanks Bob.
0:01:16 – (Bob Woods): Good. Excellent, excellent. So today we are going to be talking about three easy steps for you to get on your prospect’s radar. So we’re going to get right into that because what you need to do is capture your prospect’s attention without being salesy, without being pushy, without pitch slapping them or connecting and then pitching, you know, all of those techniques that happen to us on LinkedIn all the time. We do not want to be like that because you want to add value to your prospects before you even initiate a conversation with them. Or heck, they may even want to initiate a conversation with you, but it’s based on exactly what.
0:02:08 – (Bob Woods): Not pitch slapping, not being salesy, not being pushy. And that’s important, right Stan?
0:02:14 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Yes, exactly. The wonderful thing about LinkedIn is it’s one of its objectives is to encourage connections, build relationships, and make it easy to see when people want to reach out to you or if they are interested in you. So Bob, if you want, I’ll jump into number one because it kind of tells what you were just talking about. LinkedIn allows you to see who has looked at your profile even if they don’t engage with you otherwise.
0:02:46 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): So with the free LinkedIn, you can see the last five people who’ve looked at your profile in the past 90 days. So we do encourage you to regularly look at who’s viewed your profile. If someone looks at your profile, they have come there 99 times out of 100 intentionally. They will not stumble across your profile while scrolling through other things. They’ll come because they’ve been referred by someone or perhaps they saw one of your podcasts or your content.
0:03:20 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): So do have a Look regularly at who’s viewed your profile. Also make sure that your settings are open because if your settings are not open for people to see you when you visit their profile, you will not see who visits your profile. So LinkedIn is very, very reciprocal. You know, if you’re open, LinkedIn will show you who is also open. So just double-check your settings and regularly have a look at who’s viewed your profile.
0:03:59 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, exactly. So with visiting their profile, this is a process that I like that I liken rather to pinging on someone’s radar. You want to start pinging on people’s radars and visiting their profile is quite possibly the easiest first ping that you could put onto their profile. As long as you are checking who’s viewed your profile section, which is very important. It’s especially important if you’re a free member because you only get those first or the latest rather than five people who have viewed your profile. So you really kind of want to keep up on that to see who has viewed your profile because lord knows why they visited your profile. So. But then hopefully the people who are who you are trying to ping on their radar are checking theirs as well. One of the nice things is that LinkedIn will provide notifications through the notification feature there that people are viewing their profile. So, they will get reminded about that as, as well. So as you’re trying to start this relationship and cure this and curate this relationship, you really want to start pinging on their radars, but doing it in a way that’s not connecting pitch, that’s, that is not salesy. In other words, so with that, we’re going to go to the next step which takes us a little bit deeper and that’s following their profile for now.
0:05:43 – (Bob Woods): So the first thing you have to realize is that there is a difference between following someone on LinkedIn and connecting with someone on LinkedIn. When you connect with someone, that’s you sending them a connection request and saying, you know, hopefully writing a note with it and saying, hey, I’d like to connect because blah, blah, blah, following is different because that is much like when you follow someone on X Twitter or something like that. You are only just clicking on them to follow them. They don’t need to do anything to reciprocate.
0:06:18 – (Bob Woods): Now this is important because when it comes to connecting, you may get rejected, especially if they don’t know who you are. With the following, there is no rejection because there is no reciprocation. So clicking on the follow button while you’re on their Profile does a couple of things. One, it obviously gets you to follow them. The other important thing that it does is they are then notified that they are following you.
0:06:45 – (Bob Woods): That equals another ping on their radar. And that’s why I like that ping on their radar analogy because all these are just like little actions that you’re taking. But with each little action, you should start surfacing in their minds about, you know, oh, I remember this person, they viewed my profile, they just followed me. So that’s the type of thing that you really want to get rolling with this entire process.
0:07:13 – (Bob Woods): So once you visited their profile and once you follow them, for now, next, it’s time to engage, right, Stan?
0:07:22 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Yes. So engaging is one that takes a little bit more effort. It will also gain you more visibility because you’re actually supporting the content that they post. When people post content, they do it to demonstrate their expertise and to get more visibility. When you comment and add something substantive and relevant to the discussion when you comment, it amplifies their post via the algorithms because it sends the algorithm a signal that people are interested in their content.
0:07:56 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): And therefore LinkedIn’s algorithm will show that piece of content to more people. Ideally, we suggest that you tag them. They’ll get notified when you comment any way. But tagging them just adds kind of another layer to it and they will get an additional notification. And again, it’s, as Bob mentioned, it’s a way of lightly touching them, getting on their radar before you even invite them to connect or message them.
0:08:31 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): And lastly, this probably goes without saying, but when you do comment, you are not doing that for promotional purposes. You are purely doing that to add value to the conversation that they’ve started.
0:08:43 – (Bob Woods): That’s right. And you’re not only adding value with true, genuine value that people are going to get takeaways from. You’re not doing the proverbial great post or yes, or that kind of crap. And I’m going to call it crap too, because that’s what it is, it’s crap. You can tell I’m not feeling well because I’m starting to roll out words like that. It’s crap. When you do stuff like that, you need to engage, especially if it’s a prospect. Because when it’s a prospect, you want to kind of start proving yourself, but you’re not proving yourself in, like what Justin said, an overly promotional way. The best way to promote yourself is to show that you are of value to someone else.
0:09:24 – (Bob Woods): And how do you do that? You provide value through your comments. So if you get nothing, absolutely nothing else from this edition of this podcast. Stop it with the great post crap. I don’t want to see it anymore. And hopefully, because I proclaimed it, it will be so throughout all of LinkedIn.
0:09:45 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): I love it. That would be a wonderful thing. And yes, and thanks for that reminder because you know, it takes a little bit of time to think about a substantive comment, and sadly, LinkedIn makes it all too easy to add nonsense and fluff, as Bob just said.
0:10:06 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, and speaking of fluff, I want to talk just a little bit about AI here and using AI incorrectly because I’m seeing, especially from a couple of people on my comments where I just, I know it’s AI because it’s only regurgitating what I’ve said and then it asks for an additional comment or something like that, or just something ridiculous like that. Stop that crap too. Okay, let’s, you know, let’s put our thought into it. If you want to use AI to generate maybe some potential things that you can say based on the post, and then if you use a product like Ask SSL, it will also be trained in your voice and with what you know.
0:10:51 – (Bob Woods): So it’ll combine all this together to suggest maybe a couple of things that you can talk about based on your expertise, but yet add value to the original comment. Do stuff like that too. Don’t copy and paste out of AI. Rather stop it with that crap. I mean, seriously.
0:11:12 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Good deal. So there’s a time to push the easy button and there’s a time to think.
0:11:17 – (Bob Woods): Yes.
0:11:18 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): And Bob, love the rants.
0:11:23 – (Bob Woods): Micro rant, micro rant. I promise I’ll. I will likely feel better next week, but this week I just, I just don’t give a. Well, you know, you would know what I would probably say at this point to all that. So. So by following all these tips, you’ll be able to use LinkedIn effectively to capture your prospect’s attention without being salesy. And of course, you know, stop it with everything that I just said before.
0:11:49 – (Bob Woods): So with that, thank you for joining us for this episode of Making Sales Social Live. If you’re with us live on LinkedIn or YouTube right now, we do this every week, so keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button or whatever it is on the platform that you’re on right now to not only access all of our previous shows but to be alerted when new ones drop.
0:12:16 – (Bob Woods): If you’d like more information on our podcast, go to socialsaleslink.com podcast. We do two shows weekly. This one and our Making Sales Social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business, and so many more areas. So oh, how are we going to do this, Stan?
0:12:36 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Just two of us.
0:12:37 – (Bob Woods): I. All right, so start.
0:12:41 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): I’ll finish.
0:12:42 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, all right, that sounds good. So when you’re out and about, ensure you’re making your sales social. That’s it. That is what I’m talking about, friend. Have a great day. Have a great week, everybody. See you back here next time. Bye bye, bye bye. Now, don’t miss an episode. Visit social saleslink.com podcast. Leave a review down below. Tell us what you think, what you learned, and what you want to hear from us next.
Outro:
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