Episode 368: Who Knows Your Prospects on LinkedIn

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests teach their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

00:00:46:29 – (Bob Woods): Welcome, everyone. It’s time for Making Sales Social Live coming to you from the social sales link virtual studios and brought to you by Ask SSL dot AI. I’m Bob Woods and I’m joined as always by Brynne Tillman and Stan Robinson Junior. How is y’all doing today? 

00:01:06:43 – (Brynne Tillman): Great day. Excellent. 

00:01:11:06 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yes, excellent. Thanks, Bob. 

00:01:14:01 – (Bob Woods): Good, good. So when LinkedIn first started and I was there, it was all about networking, and that was more than 21 years ago.

00:01:25:02 – (Bob Woods): Now it’s so much more. And yet at its heart, it’s still about networking. So we’re going to talk about networking and sales and specifically about how it’s crucial for you to know who your first-degree connections are connected to so you can start those all-important conversations with those people. So before we get rolling, any initial thoughts on that, guys?

00:01:51:28 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, that’s the reason why I am so obsessed with LinkedIn because it is the only tool in the entire world where you can search and filter your connections, connections and so I’m really excited that we’re going to talk about this because there is nothing else out there that can help salespeople leverage their social proximity in order to gain access to prospects, buyers and referral partners.

00:02:23:00 – (Bob Woods): Exactly. Stan.

00:02:25:95 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yep. LinkedIn was originally created as a professional network, and it’s maintained that identity to this day in spite of the complaints sometimes that it’s becoming more Facebook, but it’s still a professional network and it’s just great to see one that’s maintained its identity and its utility in the professional network in that Brynne mentioned the power of this tool and helping us to leverage our networks more effectively.

00:02:52:20 – (Bob Woods): Exactly. So before we get started with this snowball into a fiesta, it’s important for you to know that you need to know rather, who falls into your ideal client profile or ICP. These are, you know, details about the people who you want to help and specifically about who you want to help too. So this could be a location, this could be industry, this could be the title, it could be a combination of those things.

00:03:27:01 – (Bob Woods): It could be all of those things. It could be things that I’m not even thinking about right now. But you have to build that ideal client profile because you really need to know who you’re looking for before you reach out to your first-degree connections to ask them about their connections. Otherwise, you’re just spinning your wheels with people who may not necessarily need to help you in terms of either prospects or even networking partners and the prospect.

00:03:53:17 – (Bob Woods): ICP And a networking partner. ICP which really is an ICP and might be IRPC or something like that at that point, might actually be two separate things as well. So obviously keep all of those in mind as well. 

00:04:13:79 – (Brynne Tillman): So let’s jump in. 

00:04:14:13 – (Bob Woods): We are jumping in number one. So this is all going to involve searching and searching again for your ideal client profile or if you’re looking to network your AI and whatever, number one is search by relationship.

00:04:31:27 – (Bob Woods): So, Brynne, do you want to go ahead and expand and expound? 

00:04:35:86 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I mean, look, we can start, I guess, with the big general search, right? So, you know, as you mentioned, you want to identify your ICP and a lot of this is taking a look at how your current clients position themselves, what are their roles, what are their titles, what geographic location are serving an industry is interesting because you could put it in manufacturing, but there could be four or five subcategories.

00:05:04:22 – (Brynne Tillman): So you’re going to take the time to build out those filters. So now relationship. Today we’re talking about who knows your prospects. So we’re not going to talk about the first-degree connections that help you to identify who you know, that meets that. Creating that criteria. Where we’re going to focus is on the second-degree relationship button. This allows us to search and filter all of our connections, connections based on the criteria, and we can get a list of all the people we want to meet with whom we have a shared connection 

00:05:43:23 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, it’s pretty simple stan.

00:05:45:69 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yep. Not much to add there, just to reemphasize what you said about the pre-work in terms of knowing your ideal customer profile beforehand, because that’s when the LinkedIn filters can really work for you. So a lot of times when we’re talking to people about LinkedIn strategy, we say a big part of LinkedIn strategy takes place off of LinkedIn because you have to be clear on who you want to connect with before you even start looking at LinkedIn filters.

00:06:15:05 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, exactly. But LinkedIn is very powerful when it comes to its filters. That’s why LinkedIn has built up its filters into something that once upon a time, I mean, barely had filters. And now in even in the free version of LinkedIn, you have access to some pretty powerful filters. If you go all the way to the sales navigator route, which we’re going to be talking about a little bit, the filters there are just amazing and you can absolutely have your mind blown by some of the things that you can find in Sales Navigator and the people you can find the sales navigator to based on who you want to who you want to meet learn more about 

00:06:58:55 – (Brynne Tillman): Love that. All right, next one. 

00:07:01:23 – (Bob Woods): So now we’re going to get a little bit more specific with the filters because there’s it’s fairly new, I think, search by a particular filter that is called connections of.

07:18:46 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, not new. This has been forever 

07:22:00 – (Bob Woods): connections of have been for you know, I’m actually getting that confused with the with another one. But yeah you’re right. Go ahead. 

00:07:31:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. Connections. That is why I mean you’re like yes, this is right. Connections. That is the magic. So when you are, whether you’re in the free LinkedIn or in Sales Navigator, this is an absolutely incredible tool because now let’s say you’ve got 12,002nd-degree connections that match your ideal prospect. Now I’m going to say, who is Bob Woods now that meets that criteria?

00:07:55:11 – (Brynne Tillman): I think the stats is 72, right? So now I can reach out to Bob and say, Hey, Bob, you’re connected to quite a few people. I’m looking to get in front of you. You have 10 minutes where I can run these names by you, right? And so that when you search by connections are off and all of your criteria and by the way, this could be referral partners, this could be clients, you know, other vendors that sell to the same customer, but that’s not a competitor.

00:08:26:25 – (Brynne Tillman): There are so many people that can really make some of those strategic introductions and being able to search their specific connections to build that list is very powerful. 

00:08:04:09 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Exactly. LinkedIn allows you to do a lot of the work beforehand to make life easier for the person you would like to give you an introduction or referral because we’ve all done work with clients and they were super happy with what we did for them.

00:08:56:07 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): And we say, you know, one of the ways I work is by referral. Do you know anyone you think could use our services? And usually with an answer, like, Let me think about it. Yeah. And this way you can produce a list and think about it for them. And his friend said, Then just walk through the list with them and make their life easy.

00:09:14:04 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, your brain spells fewer brain cells spent equals hopefully better results in that. In that regard. So. Absolutely. Absolutely. So numero trace is a search by referral partner names, which is kind of what we’ve described already. It’s just now you’re going to be thinking more along the lines of people who you are actively having referrals with. Essentially. 

00:09:42:98 – (Brynne Tillman): Thought, I love this one, Bob, because this is a fabulous opportunity to find strategic referral partners.

00:09:51:22 – (Brynne Tillman): So there are lots of ways to do this. One of my favorite ways to find these partners is to ask my clients, who else are they working with? Because they are they’ve come in pre-vetted. If your client loves them, you can feel comfortable referring them and they’ll feel comfortable referring you. If the client says, I don’t really love my CPA, you can say, Hey, I’ve got some other CPAs that my other clients have really liked.

00:10:15:14 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m happy to make some strategic introductions for you, so that’s great. But now let’s pull LinkedIn into this and this list. So exactly, Bob, what you said, we’ve just sort of talked about pictures of, but here’s what I recommend. Reach out and I’ll say, Hey, Stan, I’m really looking forward to our networking meeting next week. Please feel free to look through my LinkedIn connections, build a list of people that you want to meet, and we can whittle them down to a few meaningful introductions.

00:10:42:29 – (Brynne Tillman): If it’s okay with you, I can do the same. And so now we set it up in a way that it’s expected. You’re going to come with the list now if it’s on. If you’re doing a virtual networking meeting, simply share your screen with one another. Great. But if it’s in person, I’m going to go back to my old school where you were across the street from my office when I had a physical office in Plymouth meeting.

00:11:09:19 – (Brynne Tillman): Pennsylvania was a California Pizza Kitchen, and about three times a week I would have networking lunches and I could walk there and it was awesome. And I would actually print off the three pages of connections that met that criteria. And I could sit there. We didn’t have to open up the computer and it was just a nice conversation and I literally would just take notes and vice versa.

00:11:35:26 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love this. I’m going to share one last thing. When you create that list, there is a you are all at the top. Every single thing you do on LinkedIn, unless it’s a popup box, has its own unique link, its own unique. You are out there, you build a list of connections of filters and you click on the first-degree filter.

00:12:03:28 – (Brynne Tillman): You’re going to see your first degrees. But if I go ahead and copy that link and send it to Stan and Stan clicks through, he’s going to see his first degrees. So if you run up against someone who has closed down their network, this is your way around it. While you can’t see the list by sending Stan a list of exactly the criteria and first degrees, you could say, Hey Stan, here’s a list of the people you know that I’m looking to meet.

00:12:34:11 – (Brynne Tillman): And he’s going to be like, How did you do that? But it’s really simple to do, and really it’s a game changer because I can’t tell you how many people come to me, come to us and say, Yeah, but they closed down their 

00:12:46:08 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, we just happened last week. Absolutely. Yeah. 

00:12:50:05 – (Brynne Tillman): This is your workaround.

00:12:52:07 –  (Bob Woods): Yeah. So just one quick note about that URL.

00:12:54:13 – (Bob Woods): It’s going to be long. It’s going to be gangly. There’s going to be so much stuff in there that you’re just scratching your head about. You need to copy everything out because otherwise, it’s not going to work. 

00:13:07:65 – (Brynne Tillman): So we can throw in. You could create a bit of Lee or a green belt where whatever those shortness are, and that could be helpful.

00:13:15:15 – (Brynne Tillman): And by the way, the same link would be sent to everyone once you have your ICP, your ideal list that says link goes to everyone because when they click through it, it’s their peer and 

00:13:28:34 – (Bob Woods): That’s powerful, powerful stuff. So let’s get to number four now. So we’re going to back away from the really specific person-based search, say that every time fast and we’re going to get to.

00:13:41:27 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, no, thank you. I know. And we’re going to get now to search by company. Yeah. You love it so much Brynne why don’t you start today? 

00:13:50:79 – (Brynne Tillman): Well Let’s.Stan, You want to start?

00:13:54:80 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yes. I was going to say, Brynne, you can run with it he was so excited Yes she was ready.

00:14:02:12 (Stan Robinson Jr.): So go ahead and jump in and well, 

00:14:03:76 – (Brynne Tillman): So this blows people’s minds because they don’t recognize that they can do this. But if you go into LinkedIn and Sales Navigator, you can do this as well. But in regular free LinkedIn, if you go into the search bar hit enter, and then go to all filters, change your people to companies.

00:14:24:18 – (Brynne Tillman): So this is going to give you different filters. You’re still going to have industry, but you’re going to have company size in there. And how I love this so I can pick all the industries and locations and company sizes, and then at the very bottom you’re going to see first-degree connection. And this is going to give you a list of every company that meets that criteria where you already have a connection.

00:14:51:08 – (Brynne Tillman): So why is this important? Well, before we searched based on our ideal customer profile, based on a human being. So we might miss a ton of opportunities because we may have a nondecision maker that is connected to a company. We would like to be prospecting, but that’s fine because we could go in there with my little message, you know?

00:15:17:27 – (Brynne Tillman): Hey Bob, my company just recently assigned your company to me. I noticed that you are connected and I’m wondering if you’d be open to a quick call where you can help me understand the culture in the landscape. So it’s not the right person necessarily, but it’s someone that can help you socially listen and understand what’s going on and potentially if the conversation goes well, create an internal introduction to that right person.

00:15:51:67 – (Bob Woods): and even develop a champion for you within the organization as well.

00:15:56:17 – (Bob Woods): So in other words, someone who doesn’t have, you know, ultimate signoff or purchase thing authority but someone who could essentially be your cheerleader and talk you know, and talk for you with within that company as well. 

00:16:07:60 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, that’s fabulous. So when you do that, make sure you don’t just show up. The same thing stands that earlier before. Don’t just show up and say, Who else in your company should I be talking to?

00:16:18:21 – (Brynne Tillman): Go into that company and search and build the list of the three, four, or five people that you’d like to bring into that conversation. So instead of just saying so, who else should they be talking to? You could say typically the next step would be to bring in these three people. Do you happen to have access to their calendar?

00:16:37:19 – (Brynne Tillman): And it’s a game changer in closing that next step. 

00:16:43:29 – (Bob Woods): And for sales navigator users which allows us to sustain really quick searching by company and developing that list is even easier, right? Stan 

00:16:52:06 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yeah. Sales Navigator includes so many additional filters that you can use. And I know in the next one we’re about to talk a little bit about filters like those posted on LinkedIn and change jobs that show you activity that you can’t see with free LinkedIn. 

00:17:09:43 – (Bob Woods): or even LinkedIn preview. without Sales Navigator. 

00:17:14:65 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yeah, good point. Good point. Yeah so.

00:17:18:06 – (Bob Woods): Yes, I definitely wanted to use that point as a bridge because number five is going to go straight to Mr. I probably shouldn’t call you Mr. Sales Navigator because LinkedIn will probably claim copywriter sales, Mr. Sales Nav. Now there we go. Mr. Sales Nav Now there’s so, so searching by active LinkedIn users on Sales Navigator.

00:17:41:29 –  (Bob Woods): I love this one. I think it’s especially powerful because just because you’re on LinkedIn or just because you have a LinkedIn account, rather, doesn’t necessarily mean that you are on LinkedIn. So active LinkedIn users are the people who are actually using LinkedIn and hopefully, you know, on a fairly regular basis, even maybe once a week or whatever. But Stan, why don’t you go ahead and take that away with a little bit more details about that and how to do that, and why you would do that?

00:18:09:16 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yeah, since we’re all limited on time, you want to make the best use of your time when you’re on LinkedIn or Sales Navigator. And one of the challenges is you may do a search, it comes back with 200 search results. And who do I start with? Well, it’s a good idea to start with people who, as Bob mentioned, are active on LinkedIn because they’re most likely to see your requests to connect and to post and see any comments.

00:18:36:16 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): And any time you tag them, as Bob just said, just because they have a LinkedIn account doesn’t mean that they look at LinkedIn. So sales now do give you the ability to search for people who’ve posted within the past 30 days, and that is there are few better indications of people who are active on LinkedIn than if you’ve taken the time to post.

00:19:00:22 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): So that’s one and then another one that goes under the radar. Sometimes it’s people who’ve changed jobs. Yeah. So Sales Navigator will show you people who’ve changed jobs in the past 90 days. I believe it is. Yeah. And, and that’s an opportunity to start a conversation by congratulating them. It also just gives you a window into potential opportunities in the company that they left because someone else had to take over their position and in their new position, depending on the relationship that you have with them.

00:19:35:10 – (Brynne Tillman): I love it. There are these what we call the shop. Yeah, go ahead. I’m sorry. 

00:19:42:39 – (Bob Woods): no, I just asked. That’s. That’s what we used to call in the radio business to for, like two for Tuesday. That’s. Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly. Yeah. 

00:19:52:39 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s awesome. I’m going to throw one other thing which is not searchable, and I know we’re talking about search, but I believe that this is a game changer with active on LinkedIn, which is the little green circle that’s in the bottom of the picture.

00:20:06:20 – (Brynne Tillman): Right. If you want to be active, that means they’re on right now. If it’s a solid green, they’re on desktop. If it’s green with a white dot in the middle, they’re on mobile. This is a fantastic time to message someone because they’re out there on LinkedIn at this very moment. Yeah, 

00:20:26:30 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yeah. With that, LinkedIn would let us search for those.

00:20:25:28 – (Bob Woods): But yeah. my gosh. That would be that would be hard. 

00:20:35:28 – (Brynne Tillman): That my friend Dana says, all the time. That would be juicy. 

00:20:39: 05 – (Bob Woods): Oh boy. So with that, let’s go ahead and wrap things up. So you want to thank you for joining us for this episode of Making Sales Social Live. Again sponsored by Ask SSL dot AI. if you’re with us live on LinkedIn or YouTube right now, we do this every week.

00:20:58:03 – (Bob Woods): So keep an eye out for our live sessions. If you’re listening to us on our podcast and you haven’t subscribed already, you may want to think about hitting that Subscribe or Follow button to access all of our previous shows and be alerted when new ones drop. And like everyone says out there, drop us a like our comment as well.

00:21:15:22 – (Bob Woods): We absolutely love those. We do two shows weekly, we do this one, and then our Making Sales social interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in marketing, sales, business AI, and so many more areas than you can shake a stick at, whatever that means. If you’d like more info on our podcast, go to social sales link dot com slash podcast.

00:21:38:00 – (Bob Woods): So with that, when you’re out and about this week or any week, be sure to make your sales social so all year that’s one. So the best one yet, Without a doubt. Thanks, everyone. Have a great week, a great weekend, whatever it is you’re doing, whenever you’re listening to this, bye-bye.

Outro:

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