Episode 275: The Sales Connection: Live Insights from Making Sales Social

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Welcome sales and marketing pros to Making Sales Social Live, coming to you from the Social Sales Link virtual studios. I’m Bob Woods, and joining me is the co-host of Making Sales Social Live. She’s a fellow LinkedIn social selling and AI strategist, consultant, trainer and coach

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Brynne Tillman

How are you doing, Brynne? Good, Bob. I’m excited to have a new co-host today.

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Exactly. So today, the duo changes into a trio

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as we welcome our newest co-host, Stan Robinson Jr. to the full Making Sales Social family. Stan, how [are] you doing? What’s up? Welcome! Thanks so much, Bob and Brynne. I’m delighted to be here. So glad to be part of the trio, or, well, I’m sure we’ll find something to call ourselves.

00:00:55:28 – 00:01:17:24

But yeah, I’m just excited about being part of this. Yes. The Social Tiers. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it’s not going to be all three of us every single week. Sometimes it’ll be me and Brynne, sometimes me and Stan, sometimes Stan and Brynne, you know? And sometimes, all three of us. Sometimes, though, yes, like today. Sometimes, it will be all three of us.

00:01:17:24 – 00:01:47:12

We are so excited to have Brynne or to have Stan on here, right, Brynne? That is true. I’m excited to have me, too. Yeah, me too, all three of us. We’re thrilled. And also, as Bob and I do interviews, Stan will be doing interviews with folks as well. So look for those interviews in Making Sales Social Not Live. Not Live. Making Sales Social the interviews or something like that. We’ll figure out something to call that.

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So, to usher in our brave new world here on MSSL. Let’s talk about our favorite LinkedIn features, as well as a couple of other things as we go along. So we’re just going to get right into that. Let’s start off with the new kid on the block, Stan, with his favorite LinkedIn feature. Yep. The favorite one for me is super simple.

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We do use it all the time. It’s “who’s viewed your profile.” So as simple as it sounds, at least to my knowledge, and Bob and Brynne, correct me if I’m wrong, LinkedIn is the only social platform that allows you to see who’s looked at you, even if they don’t engage with you otherwise, which to me is super powerful, especially for sales and business development professionals.

00:02:41:01 – 00:03:04:24

Yes. I love that. That is the case. Yep. What do you do, Stan, when you see someone like a first-degree connection that views your profile, what is your response? So if they’re a first-degree connection that viewed my profile and we haven’t touched base in a while, which will usually be the case, I’ll just DM them saying, “Hey, thanks so much for stopping by my profile, Bob.

00:03:04:24 – 00:03:26:02

I know it’s been a while since we’ve been in touch and if there’s any way I can help you, please let me know.” And depending again on who it is, it could be, you know, “We’re overdue for a call. Let’s catch up.” Oh that’s great. I will always ask, “Can I ask what brought you to my profile today?”

00:03:26:04 – 00:03:49:20

So that’s my typical go to. Even if it’s a second-degree, and I send a connection request, I want to know why they showed up. How did they get here? Because sometimes that helps for me to determine what kind of conversation to have. Yeah, exactly. Because what you just said is what I always use for a second-degree, [which] is what brought you to my profile.

00:03:49:20 – 00:04:16:10

But it makes sense thinking about it for first-degree also because there’s a reason why they stop by. But what often happens is they may look at your profile, intend to reach out to you, someone walks into the office, they get a notification, they forget about it, and then they never reach out. But because you can see who’s your profile, you can reach out.

00:04:16:12 – 00:05:08:25

Yeah. I love that. Brynne, you are next. My favorite feature, hands down, is the ability to search and filter your connection’s connections. This is why I teach LinkedIn. Because of this feature. I absolutely love this. Whether it is your client that you’re searching, or networking partner, or even your general connections when you have the opportunity to search your connection’s connections and have conversations around the list that you’ve brought up, you will not only get introductions but even permission to name drop so we can start conversations with our targeted prospects at a high level of credibility.

00:05:08:28 – 00:05:47:13

So I think that’s really important. Yep. Sounds good. So what’s mine? Thank you for asking. I appreciate that. Mine is the featured section of the profile. So where else can you add value-added, educational, and thought leadership-driven content to the very audience that you’re trying to attract and then put a spotlight on it? That’s what I think is so important about the featured section, because you have to remember people are going to come to your profile from a wide variety of areas.

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Sometimes it is going to be content where hopefully you are providing the value-added, educational, thought leadership-driven content. Other times it’s going to come in directly from a search. Sometimes it may come in from a Google search where they’re coming in from outside of LinkedIn and they have no idea what you’re about. The featured section, like I said before, really puts that spotlight on exactly what you do.

00:06:11:05 – 00:06:44:08

for people and you’re not talking about how you help someone, you’re actually helping someone. So I think that the featured section is just, it’s huge. It gets slapped down a lot by other people, but that’s just because they really don’t know exactly what to do with it. So what you do with it is you put in that educational, value-added, and thought leadership-driven content where you are actually helping people with the reason why they probably came to your profile in the first place.

00:06:44:11 – 00:07:19:01

I love that. And a conversation we were having in our meeting this morning, it was around kind of this new trend to add your offering in the featured section. I’m uncomfortable with it unless it’s a free kind of experience. But what are your thoughts? I know a lot of our very trusted colleagues have kind of moved to this as an option so that their featured section isn’t necessarily a resource, it’s a pitch, I think.

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Yeah. So my opinion on that is, I’m with you in that I don’t like it. That being said, if you’re really feeling the need to actually do that, what I would do, first of all you can show up to five items in your featured section like in that main area before you click on see more, if you’ve got other stuff there.

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So within that, I view things as position one, position two, position three, position four, and position five. The first three positions always show up and then you have to page in just a little bit to see positions four and five. If you are like, my God, I’ve got to have an offer up there.

00:07:59:25 – 00:08:33:28

I would put it probably in position five so that you’re still leading with the stuff where you are actually helping people. But then, you know, hopefully in that position, number five is something with an offer to where you can actually help people more with the stuff that you’ve already talked about in those first three positions. So I’m just going to say, before we go to Stan on this, real quick, I really love that LinkedIn is putting a stronger push on providing services.

00:08:33:28 – 00:09:01:22

Yes. And for me, I think that would be the direction where that section is meant to be for your services. So you can also add visual content to that. So you can add media inside of providing services. The question [is], while we’re talking to Stan about his thoughts around this, I’m going to hop in if we have premium, can we add providing services to the featured section?

00:09:01:22 – 00:09:37:11

I’m going to go check that out right now. Stan, what are your thoughts about this? Wow, good question. I never thought about that. Yeah, go check. Yeah. So I’m with Bob in that since you have multiple positions in featured, don’t lead with a paid offer. Now, if for example you have a, say, a free event that you’re promoting, then okay, if you want to put that in first place, just make sure everyone sees it because it’s going to be an event that adds value to your audience.

00:09:37:11 – 00:10:08:09

Great. So I would definitely normally put the paid offer further down. And then the other thing is you can always test it. You can always see, okay, let’s see how it performs over time. So those are the options in terms of how I see it. Okay, great. So I am on LinkedIn and providing services is not on the list for the featured, but there is a link in providing services.

00:10:08:12 – 00:10:30:10

So it’s interesting. If we add that link, I’m going to go play with that while we move on to your next. This is what we do when we’re alive. But when you move on to your next… To my next bullet point, which is our LinkedIn wish list. So these are things that, yeah, I know, I know. Right?

00:10:30:17 – 00:10:53:16

These are things that we wish LinkedIn would do or have done and not doing anymore, you know, like that, that type of thing. I’m not sure if we’re supposed to do one or three for this one. I actually have three. (inaudible) All right. Exactly. So let’s start again with Stan, the new guy, the new kid on the block, as they say.

00:10:53:19 – 00:11:17:08

Yep. Since I’m the new kid, I just picked one. And you all can fill in the rest. But it would be wonderful if we could. Now, this may sound negative, but it can help in the long run. Delete connections in bulk instead of having to do them one by one. Now, if there are some of you who have seen a way to do it.

00:11:17:11 – 00:11:43:04

That would be wonderful. But rather than going through when you’re trying to clean up your connections and in a past life, you may have a couple of hundred people in your LinkedIn network that really aren’t that relevant anymore, and you want to try to pair your network down so it’s more relevant. Well, right now you got it. You have to go one by one.

00:11:43:07 – 00:12:07:24

Whereas if there were a way where you could just go into your network, select all the people that you would like to get rid of, maybe while watching a basketball game or something and then just press delete. That to me would be helpful. Interesting. I thought there might be. Well, yeah. So for me, that’s one of the things on my wish list.

00:12:07:26 – 00:12:35:10

Yeah. Okay, great. So, Brynne, are you still playing or… Yes. You can not add a link to providing services, although there is one. LinkedIn rejects it and just redirects you to the feed. So we’re not there yet. So now I am going to start with my wish list as I would like them to add providing services to the featured section. I had a feeling that was coming.

00:12:35:13 – 00:13:08:18

So that’s definitely one of my areas. The other area that I’d love to see in the free LinkedIn first is the ability to save or categorize. We used dog tags in the free LinkedIn and moved to Sales Navigator and then they got rid of tags and sales Navigator. Right now, we have our workaround, which is using bookmarks, but I would love to see the opportunity and the availability.

00:13:08:18 – 00:13:37:13

We now can ring someone’s bell. It would be great to put them in a particular category as well. I love this from a “where are they in the pipeline” as well as “here are the CMO’s, the CROs, the Sales Leaders, the Marketing leaders.” Right? So if we have an event and we want to reach out to all of them, we can do that by tag or by category.

00:13:37:16 – 00:14:03:12

We’re teaching it with bookmarks. It does okay, but it’s not exactly the same effectiveness. There are a few other things that I have on my list, but Bob, you go ahead and then I’ll throw mine in next. Okay. So, my kind of big overarching one, which actually leads to the second item on my list, is LinkedIn

00:14:03:14 – 00:14:30:11

absolutely needs to have better communication about their new features. I cannot tell you how many times that, you know, we as “LinkedIn geeks,” quote unquote, if you didn’t know there were LinkedIn geeks before, you now know three of them. But when it comes to new features, we actually depend on Kevin D. Turner, who actually collects all of these.

00:14:30:11 – 00:14:58:29

And if it’s not a full time job for him, it’s going to be pretty darn close. But he comes out with new stuff all the time that LinkedIn never, ever, ever, it seems, never talks about at least I never see this stuff in any other place except for Kevin’s shares. And I think it’s just atrocious because LinkedIn comes out with some stuff that’s gonna (inaudible). LinkedIn sometimes, well, more than sometimes, comes out with really good things, though,

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and yet nobody knows how to use them. Either in using them themselves or something else pops up and they notice it, they don’t know what it’s there for from more of the users, looking at experience. And my prime example of that is profile videos. We had profile videos before. They were fantastic. LinkedIn never talked about it.

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Nobody knew to click on the profile picture to see their profile welcome video or whatever. And I’m guessing because no one was using it, because why else would LinkedIn take it away? LinkedIn took it away. So, precious, precious few people knew about this. So, LinkedIn absolutely needs to have better communication about new features. I’m going to piggyback on this.

00:15:48:02 – 00:16:25:05

This wasn’t on my list. It’s now on my list. Thank you! LinkedIn communication, in that realm. I would love to see LinkedIn communicate better on their rules, their user agreement, what’s working, what’s not working. So we know so many people are getting shut down all the time for breaking the user agreement, but they don’t always know why. So I got a message from someone that said, it was one of our colleagues that said that one of their customers was shut down permanently, was the message that they got.

00:16:25:07 – 00:16:46:03

There was no way to communicate with LinkedIn. There was no way to even find out what they were doing wrong. And it happened to be a Chrome extension that they never even used. They downloaded it to look at it one time. So how do we know this? They went to Twitter or X and they had to work through.

00:16:46:10 – 00:17:13:13

I mean, who would know to do that on LinkedIn to not have to go to X to find this out? And the only reason they knew is they reached out to me, “What do I do?” And I’m like, You got to tweet them. Like that. You can’t log in, you can’t send… So, three things on this: Number one, there needs to be a customer service without being logged into your account where you can communicate with LinkedIn, even if you don’t have an account that you’re logged into.

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because if you’re shut out. Number two, there needs to always be a warning. There needs to be. We have detected this. You have 72 hours to do this before you have a shutdown, right? We (Bob: agreed) most of the time, people don’t even know why they’ve been shut down, and they will not tell you no. And so I don’t know how you learn from your mistakes, right?

00:17:40:09 – 00:18:06:16

Yeah. You don’t know what you’ve done. And we happen to know a lot because we’re in this every single day. The majority of the people have no idea. You know, they hire a company for automation, they hire a company for whatever it is, and they don’t know because they’re… Yes, I understand. It’s in the user agreement. We all signed the user agreement. Yet, except for us and our colleagues,

00:18:06:17 – 00:18:44:10

no one ever reads a user agreement. So, there has to be a warning and a resolution to that warning. Hands down, that communication needs to be clear. And when people know and they spread the word, other people will stop breaking the rules. So if their goal is let’s not break the rules, let’s make it really easy for people to understand what the rules are, why we have those rules, and what they need to do so that they don’t get shut down. So that. I have another one that was on my list.

00:18:44:13 – 00:19:12:27

So, should I go? Why don’t you go ahead and do that and then we’ll move on to our one tip for sales process. Okay.The one that was on my list is reversing a decision that LinkedIn has recently made, which is limiting the amount of messages that people on the free LinkedIn account can have a month when they have a connection request.

00:19:12:29 – 00:19:41:13

So right now you can have, well, I had one person reach out to me, they had five, five messages that they could put in the LinkedIn connection request, and then they could send them without any message. So I believe the purpose of this is to stop spam. But what’s happening is there’s much more spam based on that decision because people are going to now I’m going to connect connect connect connect, right?

00:19:41:15 – 00:20:05:00

So I get that connection request. I would rather know in advance if someone is selling to me. To be quite honest, I can make that decision right off the bat. The fact that there is no message makes it more difficult on me, The recipient of those messages. I would reverse the decision, but also I would have it,

00:20:05:05 – 00:20:28:16

you only have five connection requests a month where you don’t need a message that you’re required to put in a message except for five. Because I think when you do that as a recipient, I know exactly why someone is connecting with me and I can make an informed decision on whether or not they’d be good in my network.

00:20:28:16 – 00:20:58:00

I can also easily, with a message from mobile reply to that connection request to ask “How did you find me?” If there is no message on mobile, you can’t reply, you can only accept or decline, or you can reply on desktop. But that solves a major problem for us. So I think LinkedIn did it backwards. So my wish list is that they reverse that and you can only have five a month without a message.

00:20:58:00 – 00:21:22:07

Everything else requires a note. Yeah, I cannot agree with that more. Stan, did we get your wish list already? We’ve gone on for so long that I forgot. Yeah. My wish list was just the ability to delete it in bulk, right? That’s right. But I totally agree with what Brynne is saying about (inaudible) the communication or lack thereof.

00:21:22:15 – 00:21:48:10

Now, we do seem to hear about it when they’re deprecating a feature or pulling it off. (Brynne: It’s Unsetting.) Depreciating, yeah. But it’s kind of ironic because a lot of times the first time a lot of people would hear about that feature is when they hear that LinkedIn unsetting it and they never knew they had it. Yeah. Communication. (inaudible)

00:21:48:12 – 00:22:15:14

Yeah. It would be nice if they had communication internally to just… Yeah. So, last, we’re going to go with one tip for sales pros. I’m going to go first just because mine’s really quick. Going back to the featured section. So, treat your featured section like – and I’ve said this before, so apologies if you heard this before, but treat the featured section like the produce section of a grocery store.

00:22:15:17 – 00:22:41:28

They don’t have the old brown stuff that’s out. They have the freshest, most relevant stuff that people want to buy. Same thing with your featured section. Make sure that you have really good helpful content, but make sure that it’s also fresh and helpful, obviously. Things that your audience wants to consume, not things that you want to talk about because those are probably two different things.

00:22:42:01 – 00:23:04:23

And just make sure that it’s visually nice and pleasing to the eye and make sure that the information is genuinely helpful to your audience. I love that tip for sure. And really taking advantage of the featured section is so important for salespeople. What do we call that? It’s the scroll stopper. It’s the scroll stopper.

00:23:04:23 – 00:23:41:08

Yeah, it does do that, too. Especially when in those first three positions you have graphics tied in with those posts or with the page that you’re bringing in, or whatever, basically. Absolutely. I love that. So the biggest tip is sort of a three parter, but it comes down to kind of my favorite feature. So number one, connect with everyone you talk to in real life, whether it’s a phone call, a zoom call, you’re out on the soccer field with friends.

00:23:41:08 – 00:24:02:28

I was at… my son is at Crunk Crew at Rutgers, and they had their banquet and they had alumni there. And so we’re talking to alumni and I said to my son, “You need to connect with all of these alumni on LinkedIn because when you’re out in the career – like you’re shaking hands with them, you want to connect.”

00:24:03:01 – 00:24:25:09

And they’re all crew alumni from Rutgers. I mean, you don’t get stronger than that with a room full of these folks from 1986 where they had one who was an Olympic crew from Rutgers won a medal. I can’t remember if they won a medal as a medal. So, which is amazing. Right? So these are people that were there.

00:24:25:09 – 00:24:45:15

And my son, he stood out of all the crew people. There were only ten that had a perfect GPA of 4.0, and he was one of them. So now he’s offered… I know I’m bragging. I’m definitely bragging. But now that’s the opportunity, though, for him. I am like, you may never see these folks again, but you shook hands today.

00:24:45:18 – 00:25:17:20

Connect on LinkedIn. So I want you guys, whether you’re out personally and you meet people, you’re at a restaurant, you have a conversation, just use LinkedIn as your personal, professional Rolodex. But even your friends and family, because they have jobs and they know people. So make sure that you are growing that with people that you meet. Number two, look at your calendar weekend in advance and look at who you’re speaking with.

00:25:17:22 – 00:25:41:29

There are with whom you are speaking, I think is probably grammatically correct, but it sounds funny. But look at your calendar in the future and like Sunday night or Monday morning, make a list of who each of those people know that you want to meet. We say them in Sales Navigator, but if you don’t have Sales Navigator, that’s a place where you can bookmark.

00:25:42:01 – 00:26:03:06

And then if the time is right, you can go through and run the names that these folks are connected to that you might want to meet with them and you might get a few introductions or permission to name drop. And number three, in all of this, is take inventory. You have been connecting with people for years and years.

00:26:03:13 – 00:26:39:24

Whether you export your connections or you search your first-degree connections, don’t ignore all the people that are people you want to have a conversation with. So that’s my thought. Stan. So true. This is kind of a yes. And from what Brynne was talking about, if you’re wondering what to say when you’re messaging someone on LinkedIn, whether it’s a first time or continuing a conversation, imagine what you would say if you were right in front of them. For example, at a networking event.

00:26:39:27 – 00:26:58:09

And I’ve heard Brynne say this, and it’s one of those things that it’s like, why didn’t I think of that? Because it makes so much sense. So there are things if you met someone for the first time at a networking event, the first thing that you would talk about would not be what they can buy from you.

00:26:58:11 – 00:27:29:27

And unfortunately, on LinkedIn, that’s what so many people do and what we preach, so to speak, against because it immediately makes you that guy or that person, not in a positive way. So if you’re ever wondering what to say, think about, okay, if I’m standing right in front of Bob and I’m meeting him for the first time, what would I say to build rapport, to start a relationship with Bob?

00:27:30:00 – 00:27:54:04

So that’s my tip. I love that. I think that’s awesome. I’m going to add in your smartphone and how to do it on an iPhone, but I think they all have it. You can go in and put short code. I think it’s general keyboard and text replacement, and you can go in and put a short code so I could put “Exclamation H,” Right?

00:27:54:04 – 00:28:19:07

And then I have a text. “It was terrific meeting you at (whatever event you’re going to.) I’m really looking forward to continuing our conversation. Let’s connect.” And then all you have to do is put in their name and your short code. And so, live in that meeting, you are personalizing that message, and you’re also going to remember where you met in the future.

00:28:19:14 – 00:28:46:21

So I love that. All right, Bob. So, we are going to wrap things up. Thanks again for joining us on Making Sales Social Live. If you’re with us live on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook, or X/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.

00:28:46:27 – 00:29:11:17

If you want more info on our podcast, it’s at socialsaleslink.com/podcast. Oh! We haven’t determined how we’re going to do this last one. (Brynne: What’s the last one?) So when you’re out and about. You and Stan do it together. Stan, we’re going to say, “Don’t forget to make your sales social.”

00:29:11:17 – 00:29:29:00

Okay, try again. Okay. So when you’re out and about, be sure to make your sales. Social. Okay. Not bad for not practicing. Thanks, everyone. Have a great day. We appreciate you coming by. Welcome again, Stan. Bye bye. All right, bye now.