Episode 130: 5 Ways to Finish Q4 With a Bang

Bob Woods  00:00

Hello, fellow sales professionals, business development professionals, and humans in general. And welcome to Making Sales Social Live! Brought to you by Social Sales Link. I’m Bob Woods and I’m with my co-host the LinkedIn whisperer, Brynne Tillman. How are you today, Brynne?

 Brynne Tillman  00:18

I am good, Bob, how are you?

Bob Woods  00:21

I am doing wonderful. I’m caffeinated. And ready to go with a really, really good topic. 

Intro 00:30

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.

Bob Woods  00:21

Hey, so we’re talking about finishing up Q4 with a bang. So I don’t even believe that it’s Q4 already this year. It’s just you know, they say that time is a constant but you know, something, it’s not anymore. It just seems like it’s going faster and faster all the time. So today, we’re going to discuss using LinkedIn and social selling to help you finish out 2022 strong. Like we’re talking lifting at the gym after a year strong. These are the five, yes, exactly. strong muscles. There are five LinkedIn tactics business developers and salespeople need to focus on, we believe, to finish 2022 with that proverbial bang, so we’re just gonna get right to them. With numero uno, the base of everything that you do drives people to your LinkedIn profile. So guess what? It’s time to get out the proverbial dust buster and the duster and everything and refresh that soccer.

Brynne Tillman  01:53

Lead it up spring fall cleaning!

Bob Woods  01:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah, absolutely. But yeah, absolutely, positively refresh that thing with new content, with looking at your featured section to see if there’s anything else that you can put in there, adjusting maybe your about section to maybe, potentially, depending on what you do focus a little bit more on the fact that it is q4 And depending on what your prospects do, their q4 may be as important to them as it is to you. So go into that with that frame of mind.

Brynne Tillman  02:32

I love that I think of it as doing an audit on your profile. I want to add first mindset before we, you know, we, well tacticals I mean, you just kind of gave great bullet points. But the mindset is, is this profile representing me number one in a way that will attract my prospects? And is the message aligned with what I do and when I serve and we change over time. So if you go through your profile, take a look at your banner. Is your banner helping you? Are you using it like a billboard? Is there an event that you’re going to be hosting or something that you can draw attention to? It might be time to update that banner. Cover story, which Bob’s is great. If you want to see a great cover story, go to Bob’s profile, and you’ll see his little video behind his headshot. This is a great opportunity to if you have a cover story listen to it that we change over the years we change over time. So we want to make sure that it is fresh, and that it’s aligned with the story that we’re telling the world. it’s amazing how things get outdated, and we don’t even recognize it. Your photo, If it’s 10 years old, it’s time to update it.

Bob Woods  04:00

Yeah, quite frankly, mine needs updating because I’ve lost weight and I still look heavier than I am now. And I keep looking at it. I was like, “yeah, I think I should get that sucker retaken.” So I’m gonna get it retaken one of these days but whether it is like you know, that little type of thing if your hairstyle has changed significantly, or what was the other thing I was gonna say the one thing that you really need to concentrate on in my opinion is how do you look like when you’re either on a Zoom meeting, whatever that professional look is like whether you’re on a meeting or if it’s a Zoom meeting or going to an in person meeting. So if you’re not dressed up in that suit and tie type of thing but you’re dressed up you know a little more casually reflect that in your profile photo that’s just my opinion.

Brynne Tillman  04:52

I couldn’t agree more. I think that’s awesome and I just had another, just a headshot taken when I was at an event because my hair is a different color and it’s longer and I had cataract surgery. So I’m not wearing my glasses. And so I don’t even look like my profile picture now. So, you know, I am going to practice what I teach. And this week, I will have my new headshot up. So I love that. I’m honestly, just read, just look at what you’ve got up there. As Bob mentioned, look at your feature content, and make sure it’s relevant for today.

Bob Woods  05:28

Does this sound like me? Does this sound like me today? Ultimate 30,000 foot view thinking that you should have with that.

Brynne Tillman  05:39

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Okay, number two. 

Bob Woods  05:43

taking inventory of your connections. So we do talk about this a lot about downloading your connection list from LinkedIn, going through it assigning the CPR, like we talked about. So you assign those categories, which Brynne are CPR.

Brynne Tillman  06:02

So client, prospect and referral partner. One of the things we do wrong as salespeople was we’re out there going new net, new net, try to get new connections. And it’s like, collecting business cards and sticking rubber bands around them and putting them in the corner, we want to take out those business cards and take a look at who we have been ignoring, right? So to Bob’s point, export your connections. Let’s take a look. If you’ve done this, let’s just take a look at who you’ve connected with in the last three months because it is organized in chronological order from the newest connection.

Bob Woods  06:39

when you initially doubt. (Brynne: We can also search.) Yeah, so yeah, yeah, we can use LinkedIn’s 1st-degree connections filter in LinkedIn to search as well. So one of the nice things is that when you go to their profile, and you can see and you click on their contact us section, you can see exactly when you connected with them to the date of that so and then you can also look through your messages if you’ve messaged them in the past and you know, one of you might follow up on something reengage, absolutely!

Brynne Tillman  07:16

Can I just piggyback on what you just said, and then we’ll move on to the next one because I think you start something that lit a fire under me, which is you can see the date you connected with them. So it could have been years ago, it could have been months ago, they probably don’t remember you. But that’s okay, because we’re gonna call the elephant out in the room and a little bit and I’ll say, “Hey, Bob, I’m not sure if you recall, but we connected back in June 2019. I’m reaching out because…” and we can on another day, we can talk about that but what happens is you break down the barrier of number one, I don’t remember but my goodness, she remembers when we connected. So even though I could just look at that. It breaks down the barriers. And it also is very clear that I am talking to Bob, because that’s not a message that’s not a spam message that came from automation.

Bob Woods  08:19

Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So I I do like that just in terms. And I’m not sure if Brynne will agree with this but I just had this thought. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this before. So we’ll see what happens. When it comes specifically to ending 2022 with that bang that we talked about, I would personally suggest probably reaching out to the people who you’ve connected with most recently. And then saving those ones that may have gone back years and years and years. Definitely contact those people but maybe do that at the start of 2023. So you’re like you know, “Hey, I’m, you know, a resolution of mine, 2023 is to reach out or connect or whatever you want to say with people who I haven’t been in touch with and LinkedIn for a long time.” So don’t forget any you know, so don’t maybe just prioritize a little bit. That’s my opinion.

Brynne Tillman  09:15

You’re pulling it back to our topic, which is how do we end q4? So again, piggybacking on Bob’s brilliance, I would say, I think it’s a great idea and the message could be and I would do this in the video message by the way, in mobile because yeah, right in their 1st- degrees, we could do this, and I might say, “Hey, Bob, I’m not sure if you recall, but we connected in the beginning of this year yet we haven’t had a chance to talk yet.” Right? Do it in video because we have about a 90% response rate when it comes to video messaging. Woohoo! What is number… are we on number three? 

Bob Woods  09:55

We are on numero tres and this is involving something that was launched fairly recently by LinkedIn that a lot of people don’t even know about. So this has to do with ringing the bells and we’ll explain that in a second, ringing the bells of those with whom you want to engage. So Brynne, why don’t we talk really quick about what the heck ringing bells is all about anyway, because most people I don’t think still know about this.

Brynne Tillman  10:21

So I love this. And it’s relatively new, not brand new, but relatively new, and it is totally under leverage. So to every one of your 1st-degree connections unless you’ve unfollowed them. So if I’m like, I’m connected to Fred, but Fred spams every day, I may want to stay connected to Fred and unfollow him, the bell will actually disappear. If you are not connected to someone, you have to follow them to get the bell. I’ll tell you what the bell is in a minute. And if you are a 1st-degree connection, and you haven’t followed, the bell is there and it’s at the bottom right of your banner. So if you look at the bottom right hand side of your banner right below, there’s a little bell. When you ring that bell, LinkedIn will notify you. So I want to know, every time Bob Woods shares content, I ring his bell, I’m notified, and it’s in my notifications. So I want everyone listening right now, to make a list of all the people that you want to engage with and ring their bell, you do not have to be 1st-degree connection, if you follow them, the bell will show and now we have the opportunity to start conversations with our prospects 100% around the content they’re sharing, we are relevant, like, you know, someone shares content they’re sharing because they want engagement. So if you engage you matter to them. So ring bells.

Bob Woods  11:57

Ring those bells, like Anita Ward said back in the ’70s. So next, we’re going to talk about something that I think is as important and sometimes maybe even more important than sharing your own content. And this is engaging in not only other people’s content, but with their commenters as well. I think that this is just absolutely huge. Because you get to show your thought leadership to people who may not normally see you because they’re not seeing your content for whatever reason more often than likely the algorithm just isn’t pushing it out, or because they’re 2nd-degree and they just won’t see your content period, basically. But yeah, I mean, especially when you share that content, or when you make a comment that advances the conversation, or you make a point about what’s going on with it. In other words, sharing your expertise. That can be absolutely huge, Brynne.

Brynne Tillman  13:04

So I love this. So let’s start with that algorithm piece that you mentioned. And we always have to give a shout out to Richard van der Blom, who teaches us all the algorithm genius in the world. And when he was on our master class, this one tip blew my mind. If you engage often with someone, they begin to see your content. They don’t have to engage with you to see it. So if I want to be on Bob Woods’ radar, I’m engaging with him. But all of a sudden I do this three, four times, my content is going to appear in his feed. That’s mind blowing. We have an opportunity there. So that’s the algorithm piece. 

The next piece is how do we find the right content to engage with? And this is absolutely phenomenal. And yes, it’s available in the free because it’s the question that everybody asks. If you can find, we’ll start with your 1st-degree connections. So we can search your 1st-degree connections that follow an influencer. So if your ideal prospect is someone that maybe they follow Dorie Clark, Dorie Clark is a huge influencer. So I want to find CEOs that I’m already connected to, or salespeople that I’m already connected to that follow Dory and I can search that. 

So maybe I have 127 people in my network that follow her. I whittle it down to 19 people that I want to reach out to, I go find a podcast that she’s been on or one of her newsletters, and I can send a little video that says, ‘Hey, I see we’re both big fans of Dorie Clark. Did you see her last newsletter? I got such value from x, y and z? If you’re interested, Let me know. I’m happy to send a link.” 

So I’m starting a conversation with my 1st-degree connections around the funnel. or the next thing we can do is look at Dorie Clark’s content and start engaging with her followers. So I see it probably not my 1st-degrees, maybe randomly but the people that react and comment on Dorries content, many of them are people I want to start a conversation with. So what if my conversation is, “See, we’re both fans, I’ve got some great, you know, links to some podcast she’s been on, let me know if you’re interested.” So we can start a conversation. So in Q4, pick one or two major influencers, find follow up content from them, and start to leverage your existing network or their content to start conversations with your ideal prospects.

Bob Woods  15:56

Absolutely. Take a deep breath, because we’re going on to number five now. And actually, it ties in a little bit, just have the general idea of what we just talked about because what we had talked about was kind of about social proximity, except we took it with engagement. Now we’re actually going to take social proximity and apply it directly to prospecting.

Brynne Tillman  16:19

Yes. So social proximity is what it’s if you think of physical proximity, how close am I to things, right? So social proximity are, how close, what are my pathways, my people that can get me to where I want to go? That’s my social proximity. So we just talked about 1st-degree connections. The warm social proximity piece of my friends of my friends, my connections of my connections, is something that I want you guys to do in Q4. I want you to identify your top clients this year, search their connections to see who else they know that’s like them, and ask them for either introductions or permission to name drop. If you want to really end 2022 with a Big Bang, Let’s do it with client referrals.

Bob Woods  17:14

Absolutely the best way and the easiest way to at least get that initial sales conversation started, which is, of course, what we are all about what happens from there, as I knew, but at least to get in the door, get that proverbial toe in the door. That is the best and easiest way to do it.

Brynne Tillman  17:34

Awesome. Well, let’s do, can you do a quick recap of the five for us, Bob, and then we’ll take it for landing.

Bob Woods  17:41

Quick recap, in no particular order, although I probably would put this one as number one, refresh your LinkedIn profile, make sure that it’s current, make sure that it’s speaking, like you want to speak to your prospects now. taking inventory of your connections, concentrating on probably your newer ones to finish out Q4 Strong, ringing the bells of those with whom you want to engage so that their stuff shows up in your notification. Why could I not think of that? Engaging in other people’s content and their commenters, that’s a great way to get your thought leadership out there to people with whom you do not necessarily normally reach. And what we just discussed prospecting through social proximity.

Brynne Tillman  18:29

Well, this was fun. 

Bob Woods  18:33

That was a lot of fun. They’re always fun. When are they not fun? We are fun. You’re fun. I’m fun, we’re fun. Our commenters are fun. And we know our listeners are fun because they listened to us so. So thanks again for joining us here 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 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 to access all of our previous shows and be alerted when our new ones drop. If you’d like more information on our podcast go to socialsaleslink.com/podcast We do this one every week live and we do our Making Sales Social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business and many more areas to help you the business development and sales professional out. 

So when you are out and about make sure to make your sales social. Thanks everybody. Have a great day. Bye bye. 

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