Episode 247: Optimizing LinkedIn’s Free Search for Sales

Intro 00:38

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  00:26

Hey there everybody. Thank you for joining us on Making Sales Social Live, especially if you’re our favorite people, sales and marketing pros. So we’re coming to you from the Social Sales Link Virtual Studios. I’m Bob woods of social sail blank Some call me the LinkedIn Sherpa. There’s a song

Brynne Tillman  00:47

And they’re similar. 

Bob Woods  00:49

Oh, yeah. 

Brynne Tillman  00:50

Colby Morris.

Bob Woods  00:53

And, as you’ve just heard, in the co-host seat with me is fellow SSL and a LinkedIn and Social Selling Strategies trainer and coach herself. She is known as the LinkedIn whisperer. Brynne Tillman. How’re you doing, Brynne?

Brynne Tillman  01:07

I’m good, Bob, how are you?

Bob Woods  01:10

I am doing wonderous today. Absolutely. Great. Thank you very much. Yeah, that’s great. So today, we are unlocking the secrets of LinkedIn free search. It’s a tool that many of you are probably familiar with. But you might not be using it to its full potential. Brynne, I have the insights to help you optimize your LinkedIn strategies without spending a penny, which is important during this holiday season when saving pennies is kind of optimal. 

So you can, you know, put them somewhere else essentially. So let’s get started. And as always, we’re going to be taking your questions and comments throughout the show, if you’re with us live on LinkedIn, and all of our other places as well. So, Brynne, let’s get this ball rolling with, you know, what are some of the free features that LinkedIn has in its search?

Brynne Tillman  02:05

Well, first of all, like there’s so much available for free that looks nice, and they’re not leveraging what’s already gifted to them. There are so many times where I’m teaching the class and like, Well, can you just show us the free? I’m like, “This is the free?” 

Bob Woods  02:26

This is the free? Yeah.

Brynne Tillman  02:28

Let’s start with how you get to the LinkedIn search because they hide this lead, right. So if you go up to your search bar, when you’re on LinkedIn, and your.

Bob Woods  02:39

LinkedIn, and your feed page are actually anywhere within LinkedIn, it’s almost always there, except for if you’re specifically in the settings. But if you’re not in settings, it’s always up there. 

Brynne Tillman  02:49

Perfect, right. So if you hit Enter, you’re going to see people post products, jobs, companies, groups, services, events and courses, what we’re typically looking for either people or companies when we’re in a sales position, but you might be looking for posts to engage in. We’ll save that for later on. Let’s start with people’s search. So when you click on the people search, and then what we recommend is you go to all filters.

Bob Woods  03:17

I’ll call that the secret sauce, that’s the secret sauce of searches.

Brynne Tillman  03:20

Oh, I like that. Yeah. So right now there’s a beta running, there’s often beta running that has seniority. If you see that I’m skipping it for now. Because it may not be there next week, by the time you hear it. It may be something else. But let’s go through the standard. You can search by connections, right? So you have your first degree connections and your second degree connections. There may be a third, but I ignore that. 

So the first degree is when you’re taking inventory of your own connections. Once we’re gonna go through some of these filters. You’ll see, you know, who am I connected to that I should be talking to then I’m ignoring so first degree connections. Second degree connections for me, this is the secret secret secret sauce.

Bob Woods  04:08

The secret sauce? Yeah, exactly. 

Brynne Tillman  04:10

Yeah, it’s the one. Yeah, I mean, this is the ability to search and filter your connections, connections to identify who you know, that knows who you want to know. We can also search by connections if I love this. Yeah. Because when you search connections of like, if I want to see who Bob knows that I want to meet, I can just get a list of Bob’s connections that meet all my other filters. 

So we’ll keep going. Followers of followers are really fun. This is let’s say you are a big Brene Brown fan like me. I want to see in my first degree connections, how many people follow her? In my second degree connections, how many people follow her? Maybe I have a great podcast. So I listened. And I can use this as a conversation starter because it’s someone they follow. 

“Hey, Bob, I noticed you’re a Tony Robbins fan and recently heard a podcast where he talks about this, this and this, let me know if you’re interested, I’m happy to send over a link,” right, we can start a conversation or run around what matters to them. And by the way, this is in the free, this is in the free.

Bob Woods  05:24

Everything we’re talking about is free. Yep. 

Brynne Tillman  05:29

Yeah. So locations, this if your town or a town has a zip code. So I’m in West Orange, New Jersey, it has a zip code, it will show up. Now, there are times where you’ll type your town and it doesn’t come in the drop down. And it’s because it probably shares a zip code with a bigger town. So you’d have to use that. So that’s the only criteria here. But if you are going to be out at a conference, or maybe even locally, you’re going to a client, you can search your other first degree connections or second degree connections in that area, you could get down to those just little teeny tiny towns with a zip code. Or you could do. go ahead, did you want to add to that? 

Bob Woods  06:20

Yeah, I was just thinking of, you know, like, potential use cases. So this is really important. If you have a territory, if you sell to a defined territory, you can’t necessarily narrow in to real specific zip codes. But you know, like, if you are in a major metropolitan area, and you cover most of that area, you can, you can put that in there, and then bring up the people who are in that area, which I think is really cool. 

And if you like, you know, if you have the entire United States, you can do that, because that will exclude the world wide at that point. I mean it builds out or builds in. And also, if you have multiple locations, you can put that in there too. So you know, if you’re like me, I would consider, like Cincinnati and Lexington and Louisville, you can put all three of those in there and bring up a little bit of a wider universe in there as well.

Brynne Tillman  07:13

That’s a very good point, right? So you can have more than one little town or big town that you put in there. The one thing I said just so we don’t have. So what I said doesn’t create confusion, you can’t put a zip code in like you can write Sales Navigator. 

Brynne Tillman  07:32

Right.

Bob Woods  07:33

But you can put the name of a town.

Brynne Tillman  07:35

Right. 

Brynne Tillman  07:36

And to Bob’s point, don’t just put it in one town, you could put surrounding towns so I could do West Orange Livingston, Short Hills, Milburn, Verona Montclair, and now I have like a 10 mile radius around that area.

Bob Woods  07:49

Yeah, exactly. Because what happens there is that not everyone knows, you know, they may put in their own town, that’s a larger part of the metro area. But if they are self indicating that town, it won’t necessarily show up in the metro. So you have to so this is all self reported, in other words, so you can really get granular but then also realize that you may need to put some of these towns that are surrounding in there, because that you know, greater x area may not capture everyone who’s actually in that area. 

Brynne Tillman  08:20

That is such I never really thought about it. That’s such a great point.

Bob Woods  08:26

Yeah, whenever I’m doing makeovers, I always ask people, you know, do you want to be known for your little town? Or do you want to expand your visibility a little bit and actually be known for the metro area, nine times out of 10, it’s the metro area.

Brynne Tillman  08:40

Brilliant. I love that. Love that. So there are other other filters like the company, they work for the company they used to work for. And that’s typically used more in recruiting in past companies. But there are some use cases in sales to use that the school industry is huge. There was a large industry list, if you start typing the industry, for example, if you started shaping manufacturing, you’re going to see probably eight or 10 manufacturing options come up, make sure that you’re choosing exactly the ones that you want, but generally, and you have to test this out, if you pick the overarching manufacturing, it often encompasses all of them. 

But play with it a B test and make sure that as you’re doing this, that you are getting all of them and this is how I’ve AB tested it. If I go in and I do all of the manufacturing, and I get a number. So if I did manufacturing first degree, I’m actually going to do it behind the scenes when we’re talking right. So I do manufacturing, I get 1800 1st degree connections in manufacturing. If I go back to that, all filters, right and now I’m going to add an additional manufacturing, it doesn’t switch that 1800 It stays 1800. 

But if I take out full manufacturing and just have a subcategory, it does change the numbers. So primary category, just make sure you know, if you’re gonna choose all manufacturing, you probably don’t need to choose all the subcategories. But if there’s just subcategories you’re interested in, you wouldn’t do all of the manufacturing. That’s just leave it at that I think for now, there are other things like open to and service categories, we typically skip them. But the big one is titled you want to talk about Boolean searcher and the title a little bit.

Bob Woods  10:44

Yeah, so with title, people, because again, you have to remember everything in LinkedIn is self reported. So these are the individual people who you’re trying to reach out to, they are putting in the information themselves. So sometimes they’ll call themselves a vice president. Other times they’ll call themselves a VP. So if you’re looking for just vice presidents, for some reason, you may want to say like vice president in quotes, and then put or which is a Boolean operator, what it’s called vice president or VP, that way, it will search both. And that’s just like one example of some of the Boolean operators that are available.

Brynne Tillman  11:25

And the OR is the one I use the most, but she was the one, you’re in LinkedIn, when you use a boolean operator, the OR needs to be all caps, the O has to be capital, the R has to be capital. Yep. In my experience, you can only do five ORS when you put in a six that breaks it. So in the free now and you’re in the Sales Navigator, you can kind of almost go unlimited in that. But in the free, you get five ORS, there are other things to keep in mind. 

So maybe you want a VP or vice president. And because it’s towards the Vice President, as Bob said, it’s in quotes. And let’s say we only want them in a sales role. Right? So your VP or vice president should go into brackets. And then we’re going to add an end and all capitalized sales. So what it’s going to do is it’s going to bring up all your vice presidents in your VPS. And then it’s going to say and it also has to have the word sales in it. And it will reduce your VP and vice presidents to only be in sales. 

When you can nail this. Now, if you are in Sales Navigator, you don’t need to know Boolean search. Rarely do I ever use Boolean search sometimes in keyword search, but rarely do I use it. But on LinkedIn, when you can nail down the search, you’re really going to get a list of people that match your criteria much more directly than without using it. So let’s go back to that using your first degree connections. Bob, what would you do if you had a list of these folks? Now we have our ideal persona list.

Bob Woods  13:14

Yeah, so then at that point, you go through and you start looking through their profiles and seeing if they are in fact people who, who you might want to have a sales conversation with a partner in conversation with whatever, you know, but definitely check them out. And look at their profiles and see quite frankly, if they’re people that you want to talk to because if you’re like me, sometimes, you know, people sometimes don’t, you know, it’s just one of those things essentially. 

Brynne Tillman  13:42

So for me, I’ll take a look at these folks. And usually I have a plan even a little bit prior. I mean, I’d find the list, look at who they are and say “Okay, so I’m looking to be VPs of sales” right? clearly. So there are a few things I can do to start a conversation and trust based conversation without being salesy? Few things. Number one, you can have a poll, but out a poll and then specifically for VP of sales, and then reach out to them and ask them for their one click vote on your poll, a great way to start a conversation. 

Another might be to invite them to be on a LinkedIn live with you. Or to get a quote for an ebook or a blog post that you’re writing. Yep. Right. So there’s lots of ways now that we’ve got this first degree connection. One of my favorite things to do so let’s say let’s say I have a piece of content, a blog post that I think I just want to share with them. I would actually jump on my mobile device and send them a video message. 

“Hey, Paul. It’s been a while since we last connected. I just published a blog post on five things every VP of Sales should know. I’m going to put a link down below, please let me know if you find it helpful.” Or “Let me know if you’d like the link, I’d be happy to send it to you.” But I would jump on video, it takes very little time, for some of us less time than actually typing. Right? And, and you really connect and you have a very high likelihood that they’re going to respond when you send a video. And you can also voicemail if you’re not ready for primetime.

Bob Woods  15:37

Don’t be afraid of video, though. It’s easy, and it’s much more effective. No one, hardly anyone else is doing it. So you will automatically stand out to the people who receive it just because you’re sending the darn video.

 Brynne Tillman  15:52

Awesome. Yeah. And the next thing, by the way, I just want to share is the second degree connection. This is really magic. Do you want to launch at about a second degree? Or should I keep going?

Bob Woods  16:05

You’re on a roll, keep going. 

Brynne Tillman  16:10

Alright, The reason I teach LinkedIn is because of the second degree button. And I’m not kidding you. I was a sales trainer. And we would teach people how to get referrals and the conversation would be “Hey, Bob, I’m so glad we were able to help you do X, Y and Z for your company.” I’m not sure if you know, but the way that I’ve grown, my business typically has been referrals from my happy clients. Who do you know that I could help the same way I helped you? And what’s the typical response?

Bob Woods  16:41

If I think of anyone else, I’ll let you know. Well, yeah, you know what I mean? People, generally speaking, when they’re put on the spot like that just just can’t think of it because they’re not really thinking in that vein. So I mean, I was making it accurately.

Brynne Tillman  16:57

I have never actually heard that. In that accent. Right? Yeah. 

Bob Woods  17:05

Yeah, that was bad. I apologize. But everyone knows what I meant by that, you know, people just kind of vapor walk. And it’s natural.

Brynne Tillman  17:12

That’s true. You’re like, I can’t think of anyone. Right. So this is where life it’s life changing. really life changing. So now you go into LinkedIn, you’re connected to them, you search, you have your ideal search. You’re taking a look at that, that list. And now you go to Connections and you stick in Bob Woods, who does he know that I have second degree connections, and now I have 12 people that show up that meet my criteria. 

So hip hop, I’m so glad we’ve been able to help you do X, Y, and Z. I hope you don’t mind. But I noticed you’re connected to eight people on LinkedIn, I’d love to get in front of can I run these names by you? Yep. And all right now, and you’re like, Oh, these three would be great for you. Now I can go two ways. I could say, you know, of these three, is there anyone you’d be comfortable introducing me to? Oh, yeah, Jane, I’m happy to introduce you to Jane. 

When I reached out to the other two, Can I mention you’ve been my happy client, you thought I should reach out to introduce myself. You could do that with all three. And then now you connect and I’ll say “Jane, Bob woods and I were chatting the other day your name came up in conversation. He says Hello. I’ve been working with him for the last two years on X, Y, and Z. We’ve been able to help him do A, B and C. He thought I might be able to bring some value to you.” Even if we never worked together. Let’s connect that’s too many words for connection requests, But.

Bob Woods  18:42

That’s the idea. That’s right.

Brynne Tillman  18:46

So we reach out, we connect, they connect Jane, thanks for connecting per Bob Woods recommendation, let’s set up a call. Please let me know your preferred way of scheduling. If it happens to be the calendar link. Here’s mine. Sometimes they’ll send you their calendar link, or sometimes they’ll schedule but we have about a 50% success rate of name dropping to conversation. 

And it’s been consistent for years about that. Yeah. And yet, the others will connect with you and say, “Oh, we’re not really interested this time.” But now that’s where content strategy comes into play, right? And other things where you’re nurturing them, but half of them so well, the half of three is of you know, one and a half. So let’s say two of them will connect with you. You get about 100% connection requests unless they’re not active at all. And two of them will take your call and it’s such a wonderful way to grow your pipeline from your warm market.

Bob Woods  19:46

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So let’s go to just a couple of comments here really quick agar, our friend and PAL Jack Hubbard says the bankers we work with using a B testing with Brynne Tillman, obviously as this has helped them target and focus their finite sales time. And I think that’s a huge point because you can’t just go in and just start searching the world for people, you really need to have a focused strategy. And by using the search filters in a wise way, you can definitely get to who you want to search for, like right away.

Brynne Tillman  20:25

Yeah, so it wouldn’t be better if it’s shown live . We have training classes all the time. 

Bob Woods  20:30

Yeah, we have training classes all the time. And, to be quite honest with you just because, you know, actually, so few people view us live, it’s mostly audio, that people can consume this. So that’s why we go through and we describe things because the people who are listening to us on our podcast, they don’t get us via video.

Brynne Tillman  20:51

Yeah, this is really this live, but it primarily goes to podcasts. Yeah, we don’t live here. But if you go to social sales, link.com/events, although it’s the end of the year, it’s a little light. We’ve got events all the time, and socials, if you go to the LinkedIn library, if you just scan the LinkedIn library, we have tons of training where you can see us going live and we have Ebooks and other things.

Bob Woods  21:18

And then and then Sharla, real quick, just asked, Would you please show how to search on open to work? I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know if Brynne knows how to do that to talk her through but because we do mainly sales and we don’t do career stuff. We generally don’t address career related things here just because it’s not our bailiwick. So you know, as soon as people just about, you know, like, what am I trying to think of profiles and things like that and redoing profiles for careers, we can definitely recommend people but we don’t do those.

Brynne Tillman  21:54

Yeah, interesting, though. Yeah, so if I go to jobs, that’s the job alerts. I don’t know. Even in sales. I believe you need to have a recruiter or recruiter light search. I’m gonna guess that it is not available for free. I have never seen it. And we do not have recruiter or recruiter light. But that and I don’t even know that for certain. But knowing LinkedIn, I’m gonna say that’s probably, It’s probably a premium on the recruiter. 

Bob Woods  22:35

Yeah, that’s probably true. So you know, sorry, that’s just a little bit out of our scope. Charlotte, although we tried. But, yeah, so with that, I think, unless, I think we’re pretty much tapped out. 

Brynne Tillman  22:50

But in the like, why?  

Bob Woods  22:53

I’m sorry. 

Brynne Tillman  22:54

I have one more.

Bob Woods  22:56

You have one more. Ooh. So we’re gonna call this bonus because I want to wrap up. But Brynne said, there’s one more so this is a bonus.

Brynne Tillman  23:03

Okay, bonus, um, you can search companies by first degree connection. So if you want, if you want to check out what companies you already have a connection in, when you go back to that search, and you hit enter. And you go in and you hit companies, there’s lots of filters for free. And I think there’s over 66 million companies on LinkedIn, which is an incredible number. Again, you’re gonna have location, industry, company size by employees. 

And then you’re gonna have first degree connections. So if you want to drill down to see maybe you can sell to companies, in particular industries that are between 51 and 1000 employees, you can find companies that meet that criteria. And then by clicking first degree connection, you can see if you’re in a business development role, is there anyone inside of those companies? Or are there any people inside of those companies that I can tap even if they’re not a decision maker, this is this becomes, you know, I would go in.

I would kind of map out the company and the decision makers, and just say, “Hey, Bob, you’ve been working in a social sales link now for nine years, how much you know, I’m looking to talk with some of your sales leaders.” I’m wondering if you have five minutes before I reach out to them to just kind of give me an overview of the company and what you like. So we have a conversation and then I say, “Hey, how well do you know this person or this person?” 

And I could potentially either get an insider introduction or permission to name drop hay while talking with your colleague, Bob Woods, your name came up. After I told him a little bit what I’m doing, he thought I should reach out and introduce myself. And now you’re starting those conversations at a high level. So that’s all available in the free search. 

Bob Woods  25:17

Yep. And as Brynne said earlier, if you want more information, we do have our, our library, our content library, which is absolutely free to join socialsaleslink.com/library If you want to see this stuff, that’s the best place to do it because we got all kinds of information in there.

Brynne Tillman  25:39

Yay. 

Bob Woods  25:40

Yay.

Brynne Tillman  25:41

Now you can wrap it up.

Bob Woods  25:44

No, I can. Now I can take us out of here. So thanks again for joining us on making sales social live. If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or x, formerly known as Twitter. We do this every week. So keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast and have subscribed already, hit that subscribe or follow button if you’d like more information on our podcast is that 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 many more areas that’s available in the podcast. We don’t do those live podcasts only. So to get access to those, you need to go to the podcast. So when you are out and about Be sure to make your sales.

Brynne Tillman  26:36

Social.

Outro  26:37

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