Episode 285: Advanced LinkedIn Networking Strategies

Brynne Tillman: 

My first tip has to do with using the handy QR code feature. I can’t remember how long ago LinkedIn added it, but it was one of those things where everyone said, that is awesome. Why didn’t this come sooner?

Intro

Bob Woods: Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, Stan Robinson, Jr, 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.

Brynne Tillman: Hello and welcome to Making Sales Social. How are you doing, Stan?

Stan Robinson, Jr:  Doing excellent, Brynne. I love that introduction. The music gets me excited every time.

Brynne Tillman: I know. I love it too. It’s so much fun. Yeah, I’m really excited to talk today about probably the most basic link to in topic, but also one of the most powerful, both for salespeople, executives, career people, period, which is networking, which I met in advance networking strategies today with LinkedIn.

And you know, I’ll just start by you know, networking is as old as conversation, right? There has been networking since the beginning of time. And I actually saw a very interesting animal documentary on how animals actually network and engage. So the primates anyway, which I thought was really interesting, you know, that they go out and they meet other people and then they do projects together and hunt for ants together or whatever.

Right. Like it’s interesting. So that said, right? So it’s part innately in DNA, not just of us, but other primates as well. So moving on from that out there, there’s networking in person. That has always been a thing, right? You meet people at business card exchanges trade shows and conferences and there’s online networking, which LinkedIn is known for.

But you’re even on Facebook, you’re networking with people, especially if you’re part of groups digital networking is now as much or even more prominent than in-person networking. And then there’s the networking where you can bring the two together. And that’s where I want to start today. Start with your first tip? 

Stan Robinson, Jr: Yep. So my first tip has to do with using the handy QR code feature.

I can’t remember how long ago LinkedIn added it, but it was one of those things where everyone said, that is awesome. Why didn’t this come sooner?

So it is funny because we were you know, 10 minutes ago we were talking about artificial intelligence and all that kind of thing. Now we’re talking about networking, which, as you said, Brant has been going on since, you know, there were two people around forever.

Brynne Tillman: I guess Adam and Eve networked.

Stan Robinson, Jr: Yeah, exactly. And yep. So I won’t go down that one. But yes, yes. And so with the QR code, I know for me I’m using it at in-person networking events all the time and lots of people have the LinkedIn app on their phone. And so I am in the habit of pulling the phone and saying, Hey, do you have the LinkedIn app on your phone?

And the answer is usually yes, and let’s pull it out. And I tell them, okay, go to the bottom, go to my network on your it’s in. It’s so few places.

Brynne Tillman:  Well, so some people on my network and some people have it in the news spot. I no longer have it in my network where I have it. So mine has moved in the last two weeks to my search bar only.

So because I introduced this at a meeting and I’m like, I know this inside and out, I can’t find it. And then I found it. Ha. 

Stan Robinson, Jr: So mine is in both now. So that means it may disappear from my network eventually. 

Brynne Tillman: Okay, well, let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about a deal. So good to know. 

Stan Robinson, Jr: And what I like. Like to do is I like to pull it up and then let the person I’m talking to show them how to press scan QR code because I want them to scan my QR code. So my profile comes up on their phone and then they can invite me to connect because I know that I will remember to accept their invitation and they don’t have to write me a message because we’re standing right in front of each other.

So if I invite them to connect, who knows when they will next go back on to LinkedIn and accept my invitation so I’d rather be in control.

Brynne Tillman:  I love that. And then, you know, you said you didn’t want to send you a message, but I’m going to take a really good guess that you send a welcome message once they connect. So talk a little bit about that. 

Stan Robinson, Jr: Yes. So once they do connect, I like to send a welcome message. One of the the most brilliant things I’ve heard and it’s been a lot of nuggets that you’ve dropped, Brant. But one is when you connect with someone, send a message that number one welcomes in for connecting. But number two, it serves as a reminder to you of when and where you meet them, even if you come back to them 18 months later, right?

You can just look up your messages. Okay. That’s that’s where we met. And you can pick up the conversation from there. So with the welcome message and the other handy feature on iPhone, I’m not sure if it’s on the inside. Okay, Super. Is it a form of text expander? For lack of a better word? Yeah. So in your settings under general on the iPhone, I’m talking about there’s a place for a keyboard and you can set up shortcuts that you can use to type into LinkedIn messages and whatever shortcut you choose.

You just type in the letters like mine is, I think, Asterix a t h x I envy for thanks for the invitation. Wow, that’s one minus equals I equal I love. That’s what see, that’s why I love these calls. That’s why I love these calls. So I have a standard message. All I have to do is fill in the name and send it.

Brynne Tillman: So yeah, I love this. So shortcode on the iPhone again that’s general keyboard text replacement is what it’s called tech expander You paste whatever you’ve typed or you could type there and you add your equals I or whatever that is. Now my equals I before every event I update it. So I will say it was great meeting you at the West Orange Chamber of Commerce Mayor’s Breakfast.

I’m looking forward to continuing our conversation. Bret. Now I send that so when I’m talking, whatever it is, it still feels personal. I’m looking forward to continuing the conversation. Now, if I if there’s something specific, I’ll type that in. But mostly we can now hit. So I love, love, love, love that they’re scanning your QR code. So right now I think it’s in both places.

But if you go to this search bar on the right-hand side, you’re going to see a little tiny QR code. When you open it up, you will see a tab that has the QR code and a tab that has a scan. If you hit scan, you have to allow your phone to use its camera on this app. Once you do that and by the way, you become like the number one takeaway for all of these people at these events, right?

They’re like, if nothing else, I’m like, I can’t believe I just learned that. So yeah, that’s really fun in and of itself. So now we’re connecting with all these folks. The key is responding back. So you had said something really smart. Stan said a lot of smart things, but that, you know, they’re connecting with you and you’re sending this message so that you remember in 18 months.

But the other thing it does when you send that message is you’re now in their inbox as an unread message. So that’s going to also incur and they’re in your inbox. So now that’s going to help to encourage and remind you of whom you just connected with and to respond. So fantastic. So that’s the in-person network in your in-person networking, you’re I typically will I’m looking for collaborative networking partners.

If a prospect happens to show up, that’s great, but that’s typically not my purpose. So now let’s say I’ve met these great networking partners where do we take it from there? Do you want to play with that or should I keep going? 

Stan Robinson, Jr:  Why don’t you keep going? You’re on a roll. 

Brynne Tillman: All right. Yeah. My little role. So now we’ve connected with these networking partners, and we’ve built rapport.

And now I want to say, you know, Stan, it was a great meeting at the West Orange Chamber of Commerce. The mayor is stellar. You know, I’d love to explore how we may be able to bring value to one another. So now my follow-up, I’m looking forward to get to following up on the call. I’m going to now say my next message.

Stan, again, great to meet you. Per our conversation, I’m looking forward to collaborating and finding some things in common. Please let me know your preferred way of scheduling if it happens to be a calendar, like here’s mine. So now I’m making it easy and I’m asking two things, right? I’m asking number one, do you know how you like to schedule?

So if you hate calendar links, you can tell me. And by the way, many times they send me their calendar link, which is really great, but they don’t do the work. I’m happy to do it. And, you know, so we’re as we’re giving them, it’s kind of sort of like it’s not quite permission-based. We talk a lot about permission-based prospecting, but we’re respecting the way they like to do business, right?

So sometimes they schedule and sometimes they’ll say, How’s Wednesday afternoon? It all depends on their comfort level and scheduling. So that’s all really, really fun, I think. I think it’s awesome. So I’m taking a look right now live on LinkedIn. We have 63 people on Welcome. We’re excited to have you here. We have six on YouTube. If you guys want to share or ask questions on networking, please feel free to use the chat feature.

We do have some chats here. Let’s see, I’m going to just take a look quickly. We have I, Andrew, nice to see you. It’s been a little while. Thanks for being here. We have a PIN. Yes. Welcome message. That includes how and when we met. First fact, do you have written instructions for these short codes? So the shortcode panel let us know if you have dropped me a message Brynne added a social sales link.

Let me know if you have an Android or an iPhone and I will get you those instructions. But if it’s an iPhone, it’s really so simple. You go to your little grace. Silver settings, general keyboard text replacement and you’ll see it there. And then we have a love. Hello, Justin. Great to see you. Yeah. And so we’d love to hear how you are networking on LinkedIn.

There are other ways to network. So one of the things I want to talk about, Stan, and you can build on this is networking through your client. So you go, Okay, well, I want to prospect to my clients. I want to meet other prospects that my clients know, but I also want to know who else does what vendors are my clients using that sell to people like my client.

So those are perfect networking and referral partners. So if you are in banking, you want to know they’re a CPA, You might want to know their realtor, you might want to know their insurance person. So what we want to do is go out and ask our clients, so, you know, who can I ask? Who’s your CPA? Do you like him?

He’s great. I love him. Fantastic. I’m building my network of CPAs for both networking and referring them to clients if they should need it. Are you open to an introduction or to providing me with their information so I can reach out and start connecting with the other trusted advisers of my clients? Now we have an initial conversation around sharing a client, so we both have the same client.

There is a huge chance they’re going to take your call because they don’t want to get it get back to the client that you ignored them. So now you have this conversation, you build rapport. And by the way, you can you know, you can at that point feel comfortable referring them because you have a client that loves them and they can feel comfortable referring you because they have a client that loves you, right?

So now you’ve got this really good synergy and they go, You have this conversation. If there’s good chemistry there, they are now on your list to refer out and there could be the opportunity to get referrals in once you’ve begun this relationship, are the referral cream drops huge bombs on referrals and gets soft interest thanks just and I love it it’s one of my favorite things so now we can once we built that rapport, we can now back and forth.

We can serve each other’s connections and make some strategic referrals for each other. So it goes from networking your clients, and vendors, building relationships with those vendors, and then making introductions, both ways. Now when I make an introduction to two a vendor, so I’m talking to Stan and says, You know what, I am looking for a new CPA.

So I’ll say, You know, Stan, I’ve got a few CPAs that my clients really love, but I’d like to do is introduce you to them. You can interview them to see which one best fits you, and so you can make a good decision that’s based, you know, for you. But all three of them have come very highly recommended by my other clients.

Great. The one thing I’ll say, Stan, if you don’t mind when I make this introduction, just don’t mention that I made other introductions because I think was a little awkward, but I really like to make three so that you can decide based on what works best for you. Okay, great. So now I’ve made these introductions. It’s up to them to close the business, right?

I’ve made the introductions and now I’m going ahead and. And creating sort of deposits, right? Like I’m helping them and I’m hyperfocus. So, for example, which is kind of fun. Jamie Shanks a good friend of ours, launched a company called Get Levrg, which is VA outsourcing, and I refer him all the time. It comes up all the time.

He actually said I’m his biggest referral partner for doing this. That’s great. But in my head yet and it’s fine. He’ll refer me when the time is right. I’m not worried, but in my head, I’m always thinking, I, if I did not a match or if someone can I refer them to, I’m hyper thinking about who am I getting in front of now?

Why is Jamie great? Because I work with lots we work with lots of people that need VA support. So we’re working with those entrepreneurs as well as the big companies. But the entrepreneurs need support and they do a great job. So it’s easy. Find the low-hanging fruit, the vendors, the type of vendors that you can refer and start and make sure you’re referring right and I don’t always look at it as getting the referral back.

Sometimes it’s paying it forward, you know, sometimes you’re not always going to get it back from the same person, but keep that in mind and bring that value to all of the conversations. I am a little bit of like squirrel because I just thought of something that I used to do all the time. And you can do this on LinkedIn or in person.

I’ve never done it on LinkedIn, so I’m about to say it out loud for the very first time ever, and we’ll decide if we like it or not later. But in person, I had a networking buddy, my girlfriend Debbie, and I knew exactly what Debbie did and Debbie knew exactly what I did. And we’d go to an in-person networking meeting together and my goal was to find someone in that meeting to introduce her to, and her goal was to find people to introduce me to.

So that would be two or three people. But what would happen is when she’d say, you got to meet Brant Tillman, or I’m like, You got to meet Debbie Hancock. They were, you know, they’re like, great. So you know, they would make it. We would make these introductions for each other because it was an introduction. They’re like, So tell me, what do you do?

They want to know because someone cannot continue. So on LinkedIn, try this with a vendor, with a buddy, and see if you can, you know, ultimately reach out and make some valuable introductions for one night. Yeah, this is good. Talk about this a little bit. 

Stan Robinson, Jr: Wow. Asians, this is it’s a lot of times it’s so much easier for someone else to refer you and talk about what a great job you’ve done because if you were trying to do it, it would be awkward in so many ways.

It would sound so you feel Exactly. But if someone like Debbie says you need to meet Brant, great. Comes from a third party, it’s it’s more credible and it just works so much better. 

Brynne Tillman: We could do this on LinkedIn, find your networking buddy, and go through each other’s connections. So I guess we have done this on LinkedIn. I just haven’t phrased it in the same way, but go through each other’s connections and find 15, 20 people, 30 people, and over the next couple of months, every few days, make a couple of introductions for one another and you’ll start to get some really good conversations.

One other side thing, and I love this concept. If you have a free event that’s coming up and we tend, we try to do these as much as possible. I mean, this is a free event, right? You’re on whether you’re here live or you’re in a podcast, it’s a free event. But if you’ve got a free webinar or whatever it might be, it’s really simple to reach out to your network and say, I have this free event, I’d love to invite you, and I happen to know you’re connected to a few other people that I think would get value from it.

Can I run these names by you? Would you be open to sending them an invitation to a free event? And now they’re inviting this a win-win for everybody as long as it’s a great event. Make it a great event. They invite you. They invite their network to experience you. And now it’s on you to, you know, to bring value and earn the right to get the conversation.

But this is all kind of really powerful ways to leverage LinkedIn to network ultimately through clients, through networking partners, and beyond. Yeah.

Stan Robinson, Jr: And one of the things you mentioned, Brant was delivering value, and we’re always looking for ways to deliver value when we touch someone. It shouldn’t be, Are you ready to buy yet, call or, you know, are just checking in and calling, but if you can refer them or make an introduction, that is one of the highest forms of value you can provide.

And one of the least self-serving because you’re providing them an introduction, a potential referral, which of course you know, they’re delighted to receive. 

Brynne Tillman: Yeah, I love that. I love that. So always ask your networking partners, who are you looking to meet? Right? So that, you know, don’t make this an assumption and who they want to meet and take good notes.

Remember your networking partners, Remember their kid’s names and they’re all great. All those things matter for sure when you’re building those relationships. So here’s the thing. Go out and find someone, maybe someone that’s referred business before. Maybe it’s a vendor from one of your clients. But find someone who wants to play this game with you a little bit, right?

You can exploit your connections and email them to them or they can search your connections. It’s simple to do. And really, if you can start to think about these relationships where you can make some mutual introductions, your networking is going to be the most productive business development strategy that you’ve got. Yeah, Yeah. 

Stan Robinson, Jr: Brynne, I have a question now. In terms of remembering people and remembering your you know, you’re in a networking event, you’re talking to a lot of people. Are there tools that you use to kind of remember, Okay, you know, John has three children. Ted over here is a patent attorney, whatever the case may be. 

Brynne Tillman: So I’m going to say something that I don’t necessarily advise, but everything I do is in Sales Navigator.

So all my notes on people are in my sales navigator notes. Now, why I don’t advise that necessarily unless it’s linked to your CRM is if you cancel your sales navigator account, you will lose all of those notes. So I have a friend and this is I mean, this is back. She’s been doing this since her BlackBerry days, but I have a friend that creates the content, the excuse me, the contact on her phone that and now I assume things but like I remember her scrolling through a BlackBerry thing to find that she’s like, I know I met you.

And so she creates the contact act on her phone and all her notes are in there because she will have that forever. So I don’t do that, although I probably should consider doing it. I really use Sales Navigator as my mini CRM. Good deal. 

Brynne Tillman: How about you? 

Stan Robinson, Jr: I’m still working on actually digitizing that process. So that’s one of the reasons why I asked, because it’s, you know, I would say if someone were to ask me, just generally do it in your contacts, you own those contacts you.

Brynne Tillman: But she would, you know, literally I, I truly remember her with her BlackBerry running into someone. I was with her. And in that working meeting, she’s like, I know we met. I know we met. He goes, I don’t think so. He’s like, she’s like, Nope, we met and she could pull it up on her phone. And she knew exactly where they met.

So I thought that was pretty cool. Wow. So that’s a lot of fun. I’d love to hear we’ve got so many folks on right now. I’d love to hear if you want to chat. How are you networking? If you have any questions about networking with LinkedIn. But all in all, I can tell you is it’s incredibly powerful.

It’s about building rapport and relationships. And, you know, it’s it’s purposeful. I think LinkedIn needs to be purposeful for it could be a bit like a rabbit hole for sure. It could be a scary rabbit hole for sure if you’re not purposeful. So you want to make sure you’ve got a plan, that you’ve got content. And it’s funny to see this.

So hello, Susan Bowie. I’m going to pull you up here. So good advice to keep in the contacts on your phone. I lost a lot of my navigator notes when they stopped supporting the version and moved us to another one. That’s a big one. Now, Susan is part of Vertical IQ, which is an incredible content curation platform for industry trends and all kinds of fabulous things.

That’s also a wonderful way to start conversations with networking partners. You know, I’ve got this industry report. You can start with a summary and say, I have the whole report if you’re interested. So, you know, ultimately you can start conversations with these people if you don’t have a free event around sharing in industry trends report right? And then you can get them on a one-on-one call based on that content.

And so one of the things that Vertical IQ does wonderfully is they summarize the content so you can start a conversation around a summary and then you can get on a call to go through the full report. So another way to really network with someone I love meet and greet as well. Andrew For sure. And Tyler, can you cover how to integrate a sales navigator into a CRM for a drip campaign?

So Tyler, the first thing is you need to have ten sales navigator seats in order to integrate into Salesforce. Microsoft Dynamics. HubSpot is fully integrated now. So it’s not, you know, it’s something that your IT Department really has to work on and there’s code that gets exchanged between the CRM and your sales navigator instance. However, our way to kind of convert is a couple of things.

So we have four people who scanned the LinkedIn library today, that’s the QR code that’s above. If you’re listening to podcasts, just go to social sales links slash library. And this is a ton of free content for your email and then you’re opting into a drip campaign. So there are a lot of things that you can do downloads to content where you can capture and all we ask is for your name and your email, but you are literally buying that content with your contact information.

So calls to action on the bottom of content and posts so you can drive people to self-select into your CRM. The other thing is Sales Navigator Advanced, an Advanced Plus has a feature called Smart Links. And with smart links, you’ve got this hub of content and you can see who’s engaging and how long they’ve been there. And in that, you can have an opt-in link somewhere.

So love that, love that, love that. And Susan says, Yeah, really good stuff. So we are just coming up to the end of today’s program on advanced LinkedIn strategies, which really, Stan, these are just strategies for networking and implementing the brilliance of LinkedIn into it. 

Stan Robinson, Jr: Into it, Yep. And combining offline and online. 

Brynne Tillman: That’s right. So that’s well, as always, I have so much fun hanging out with you.

I really enjoyed today and this is why this was a great group today. We saw 51 people live. If you’re listening to the podcast, you can come back and watch it live. We’ve got it everywhere. YouTube in lots of places. If you want to see the visual where we’re happy to have you there. As we close out today and link as advanced LinkedIn networking strategies, what I love to say is go back to your LinkedIn connections and find the person or people and just give this a try with one person, have some fun with it, and give it a try.

And then once you’ve mastered it with one person, it’s so easy to start to implement this into your business development strategies or career-seeking strategies or whatever you’re networking for. So Stan, thanks for joining. I appreciate having you. And for everyone else, when you are out and about, don’t forget to make yourself social. We did it by guys.

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