Episode 405: Prove It: Personal Branding That Builds Trust on LinkedIn
In this episode of Making Sales Social, Brynne Tillman welcomes back the ever-insightful Kevin D. Turner, Managing Director of TNT Brand Strategist and a LinkedIn power-user known for amplifying new features and elevating professional profiles. Kevin shares his top strategies for standing out on LinkedIn without the brag, focusing on authenticity, credibility, and the metrics that matter. From crafting magnetic headlines to building a brand that speaks louder than words, this conversation is packed with real-world advice for making your profile prove it.
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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.
00:00:40:25 – (Brynne Tillman): Welcome back to Making Sales Social. I’m Brynne Tillman, and I am so crazy excited to introduce our remarkable guest today, Kevin D. Turner, as the managing director of TNT Brand strategist. Kevin has a proven track record of not only transforming his own career, but also helping thousands of others excel in their professional journeys through personal branding and LinkedIn optimization.
00:01:08:15 – (Brynne Tillman): With extensive experience that spans fortune 50 sales and marketing management to nonprofit leadership and venture capital, Kevin possesses invaluable insights into the intricacies of branding, social selling, and digital marketing. Today, he’s going to share his strategies for professional success and highlight the importance of crafting a personal profile brand. Kevin my buddy. Hello! Welcome to the show.
00:01:40:15 – (Kevin D. Turner): I’m excited to be here. I love everything you’re doing and you’ve got so much going on right now with the podcast. I’m very excited for you and I love that you had me back. So.
00:01:52:15 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh my gosh. Here. So I love this. So I will say, I participate in Jack grants with Modern bankers. And once a week there’s a Jack grant with Bryn. And Jack was traveling. So Bryn ranted with Kevin on that podcast. And it was so good. I’m like, oh my gosh, I need to have you back over here. So excited. I’m going to tell you there are a handful of folks in our industry that I just like to bow down to that I just think are absolutely brilliant, that have created a fabulous niche.
00:02:28:02 – (Brynne Tillman): And you, my friend, are top in that list. And so I’m so excited for the value you have brought to our community is immeasurable. And we are going to definitely talk about the brand strategies and the value that you bring to your customers. The value you bring to our community is what you have created. You are the magnet for new features on LinkedIn, and because you come from such a giving heart where you’re just like, I think people should know, I’m just going to share it.
00:03:06:20 – (Brynne Tillman): When anyone finds anything new on the platform, you’re the first person they ping. So every week I would say at least 3 or 4 times a month we’re running a coaching call and Bob or Stan or I will say, did you see the new post from Kevin Turner? And we add that into our coaching. So that’s like us and more than anyone else in our field, do we do that? So I thank you first and foremost,
00:03:37:20 – (Kevin D. Turner): I love that, Brynne. Thank you very much and know the respect is mutual. I love everything you’re doing and I get a lot from our interaction. And that’s the way it should be, right? There should be that kind of mutual benefit in all our relationships. And, those are the ones you definitely want to nurture in that process.
00:03:55:17 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, well, here we go. Let’s nurture this room. So you are both known for being the magnet for new features and amplifier of new LinkedIn features. But what I love about your brand is that you come from a private perspective. So it’s not about bragging. It’s about proving the value that people can bring to their targeted audience. So talk a little bit about what you mean when you say proving it. When it comes to personal branding,
00:04:39:20 – (Kevin D. Turner): You know, I think a lot of it is sharing the real information, right. What really happened? Get some of those metrics to it. Get people to back up your conversations right in that process and kind of bring it out.
00:04:53:05 – (Kevin D. Turner): And, you know, it’s always fascinating to me because some people try to tell you absolutely everything they did in all 50 components of getting something done. Yes. You want to tell them the truth, but you only want to tell them the truth that moves you forward, that you need to tell them. Right. And so sometimes some of those details you got to put away and you got to focus on this bigger picture, but you always bring the numbers in to support the fact that it actually happened.
00:05:20:07 – (Kevin D. Turner): And anytime you can use names in an appropriate way, not name dropping, but in the sense of name lifting, you know, you want to do that because you can help others as much as they have helped you, and that’s the time to do it in that process. And so that’s one of those things that has made the LinkedIn feature successful. I always give credit, right? If somebody brings it to me, I don’t want to try to take credit. I don’t want to pretend I found all this stuff. And there are a lot of people out there who do that, and it usually comes out about a week, and after I do mine, and then they say, look what I found.
00:05:55:21- (Kevin D. Turner): And it’s sometimes even written the same, and I have to sometimes address that. But that’s part of it, right? There is no name lifting others in your process.
00:06:08:17 – (Brynne Tillman): So just quick funny stories. I had a piece that went viral, and it got stolen by lots of people, including my spelling error. I had e h e r e instead t h e i r , so it didn’t come up in spellcheck.
00:06:29:06 – (Kevin D. Turner): Nice.
00:06:33:17 – (Brynne Tillman): And not on purpose, but there were dozens and dozens of people because it happened to do so well. And it’s an old, old post. But it talked about logging out of LinkedIn right now, and it was how you can remotely log out. It wasn’t even fantastic.
00:06:47:06 – (Kevin D. Turner): But, it was salable,
00:06:48:17 – (Brynne Tillman): but it was still,
00:06:49:06 – (Kevin D. Turner): you know, that’s the beauty of thieves. They’re usually not very smart. And then they leave their breadcrumbs out there. I’ve always used, within describing the official name of a feature. I’ve always used these brackets. And to me, that came back from the days of product building. Right. And programming, you wanted to say this is what it is so that nobody else confuses it, uses different names for it or kind of gets lost in the process.
00:07:17:03 – (Kevin D. Turner): So I’ve always used when anybody ever steals content, they always forget to remove the brackets, because I don’t know of anybody else who does that. It is kind of an inner geek exposure, but yeah, works for me. And so that’s how I usually find out. I usually go in there and I’ll do a search with whatever the term is in a bracket, and then you’ll see all these other posts from, you know, days after you expose something, you see these posts out there and they’re all in brackets and it’s interesting.
00:07:45:05 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, yeah, I’ve had I’m at the point where I just take it as a compliment. I mean, what are we going to do?
00:07:51:03 – (Kevin D. Turner): There’s a lot of time on it, that’s for sure.
00:07:52:03 – (Brynne Tillman): It is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I want to go back to the positive side of profile branding. Talk about and I want to talk about some mistakes and I want to talk about some tips. But I want us to focus a little bit on the sections of the profile where it really works. So I’m going to start with the obvious, like, client recommendation, but you can talk more about that, but what are some areas that help to prove it?
00:08:27:03 – (Kevin D. Turner): You know, I think the first thing is when you’re trying to get someone to your profile, right, you’re appearing in searches in that process. That’s where you want to make sure you’re getting the headline. Right. Right. It’s got to really set yourself apart from everybody else. I always say a little different can make all the difference, right? Step out. Tell them what you do. Tell them what you deliver. Put it in a way that they’re going to maybe laugh or remember whatever it is.
00:08:53:12 – (Kevin D. Turner): I always say, you know, my mission is to eliminate personal branding. And people are like, did you misspell. No, you didn’t know. That’s funny. They remember. And, you know, that headline is key because that’s the first thing they really, really see when they’re doing searches and you’re coming up, you know, if you get a whole list and all it says is, you know, chief marketing officer, chief Marketing officer, chief marketing officer and then one says, you know, mission to eliminate personal branding.
00:09:20:20 – (Kevin D. Turner): Oh, wait a minute. That’s different from all the others. I’m going to go check that one out. That’s what you want to do. You want to stand out in that sense. And so that to me is the first place people get things wrong. And I’m not one of those that says, you know, it has to be super short or it has to be completely, you know, fill up all 200 spaces.
00:09:40:11 – (Kevin D. Turner): I’m one that says, you know, use what you need to use, but make sure you’re getting it across that you’re very effective, very efficient, and then it feels right to you and it’s bringing in the right people. So don’t listen. There’s so many people on LinkedIn who say, this is absolutely how you have to do it. One size fits all. You guess you’ve got to fit in the system. You don’t. And, you know, just make it your own. But I think that’s the first place that most people go wrong. Then you got it. You got to make it interesting.
00:10:09:03 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love it. So we have that headline we mentioned just quickly recommendations. Any other areas where proving it should really come through.
00:010:18:11 – (Kevin D. Turner): Well, and there’s a couple of ways to look at this. One in the sense of the database of LinkedIn. Right. 1.3 billion profiles out there. Any database has to be sortable. Right. So one of the ways you’re going to prove that you can do things is to use the correct words that are within the filter of LinkedIn.
00:10:38:16 – (Kevin D. Turner): So, you know, if you use mergers and acquisitions. But LinkedIn actually has that set up as M&A. You want to use what LinkedIn uses because that’s how that database is being sorted. So in your sense of putting out, you know, the proof of your skill sets, you want to use the terms that LinkedIn uses to sort that database.
00:10:59:27 – (Kevin D. Turner): LinkedIn is a $17 billion business. 65% of its annual revenue comes from the sale of Recruiter and Sales Navigator. Sales navigators are actually a small percentage.
00:11:13:03 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh yeah, recruiters, that big one.
00:11:14:27 – (Kevin D. Turner): And if you think about it, all those are giving you complete access to the LinkedIn database and to be able to have access to a database that large, you have to be able to sort of categorize it, you know? And so to me, that’s one of the first steps. The very, very basic step of proof is saying, I’ve got what you need, right? I’m the solution. You’re looking for A, B and C, I’ve got A, B and C, and I’m using it in the terms that you’re going to search for, for me, you know, there’s that mountain of proof.
00:11:43:26 – (Kevin D. Turner): And then as you’re using those words, let’s say you’re putting them into your skills. You’re assigning them to the top five. Right. You’re highly assigned to your about section and the rest you’re signing to experience. And believe it or not, every time you assign it to experience, you get years of experience for that skill, which is kind of cool, right? So if you know marketing, you want to be able to say you got 20 years of digital marketing and better be attached to 20 years worth of jobs in digital marketing, right? Otherwise.
00:12:11:03 – (Brynne Tillman): Right. You, I love this.
00:12:15:26 – (Kevin D. Turner): Yeah. And then you want to use those same terms within the context, right. Because LinkedIn looks at that. And if I say I’ve got something as a skill then they’re going to look for it in the context.
00:12:27:05 – (Kevin D. Turner): If it’s not in the context, there’s a lot of doubt. The other component of that is to get others to step up and give you that skill. Right? Because if you or I say we’ve got something that’s just you or I saying it right, it could be true. Maybe not. You know, if others say we have it, well, now you’ve got social proof, right?
00:12:48:09 – (Kevin D. Turner): And then if people and I think you had coffee the other day that, you know, if they’re getting more people like him, that may be super scored in that particular skill set, and then they come and endorse you. That’s a multiplier. So there’s this huge kind of area where you can establish that proof just by the simplicity of the words.
00:13:11:07 – (Kevin D. Turner): Right. The filtering words and then getting them into your context, writing them in there. Because if you say your, your x, y and z and then your content doesn’t fulfill that, you might have gotten them to your page.
00:13:25:23 – (Brynne Tillman): Brilliant.
00:13:26:07 – (Kevin D. Turner): Getting it out of what they’re reading and seeing.
00:13:27:23 – (Brynne Tillman): Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. Love this. What about the featured section? How important is that?
00:13:34:07 – (Kevin D. Turner): You know, most of LinkedIn is text, right? So the feature to me is, it is a place for a little eye candy, right where you can put some proof out there. You can either bring up recommendations from the bottom and you can bring them in if you’ve got a premium account business premium, or if you don’t have a business premium, you can still make PDFs or images and bring those up there.
00:13:56:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): You could talk about things you’ve done, projects you can bring in. You know, if you created, let’s say you launched a book. Bring it in, bring the cover of the book, bring it right up to it, get them a link where they can actually purchase the book.
00:14:09:23 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah.
00:14:10:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): Proof.
00:14:11:23 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah.
00:14:12:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): You know, in that sense. But that section to me is extremely powerful in the sense that it breaks up the monotony of all text. Right? So it gives you a little break visually, and then it definitely allows you to kind of put some things out there that somebody might not have picked up in reading, because we’ll respond differently. I’m very visually wired. You know, if I see a block of text, I may or may not read it, but if I see a couple of pictures that are really cool and they’ve got a little bit of text under diving in, and that to me is that featured section, right that that’s going to pull in.
00:14:44:14 – (Brynne Tillman): You know I love that.
00:14:45:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): Right. And the majority of us are visually wired. So yeah. You know that’s why I think it is a critical section to use.
00:14:54:14 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. We call it the scroll stopper.
00:14:55:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): Yeah. You got it. You got it. And that’s exactly what it’s doing right. You’re going through all that text and then boom, this is going to make me want to kind of dive in there and really see this stuff. And I’m always amazed how people take things differently. You know, if they sit and take the time to read them. And then if you give them the same option with visuals, it remembers the same content with visuals before they remember the content without visuals. When that’s, that’s just, you know, the way we’re set up as people,
00:15:23:14 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. Oh, I love this. So rumor has it that you’ve optimized over 5000 LinkedIn profiles in your day,
00:15:38:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): and I’m done. That’s not even the ones we’ve done through like classroom sessions. That’s just wow, hands on. So, I’ve been doing that since 2005. So long a time.
00:15:51:14 – (Brynne Tillman): That is impressive. And I love hearing that. And, you are definitely a go to guy for this for sure. But I want to ask you, what are some mistakes that you really made? You laugh. You know, that’s a tough one, right?
00:16:05:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): The spelling’s like sales, manager, you know me.
00:16:08:14 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh,
00:16:09:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): just very common misspellings. And you think about it. There isn’t a sales manager in business unless you’re doing sheep, right?
00:16:16:08 – (Brynne Tillman): Right.
00:16:18:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): It doesn’t happen.
00:16:19:08 – (Brynne Tillman): And so around Christmas time, maybe.
00:16:20:01 – (Kevin D. Turner): Yeah, yeah. Just the fact that some people just don’t check those very basic things and spelling is huge. Right. And so you can see some things that are there fairly humorous when you really read into and by those misspellings and what you could reinterpret them to be.
00:16:35:28 – (Kevin D. Turner): that’s, that’s probably the biggest thing that always kind of pops out. The other thing is the visuals that people choose to use.You know, you see a lot of profile pictures with somebody’s hand over the shoulder, right? Or cut out laughing, cut adding into the picture, you know, do I want to hire them or they’re going to be drinking all afternoon?
00:16:53:05 – (Kevin D. Turner): Yeah. You have to be really careful about what that picture says. And the one that I will tell you drives me absolutely bonkers, is the professional photo that uses a gray background. They always have that kind of blurry kind of gray background. And if you think about it, if you’re having a gray day kind of day or you have
00:17:16:08 – (Brynne Tillman): my home gray me,
00:17:17:05 – (Kevin D. Turner): it’s, I don’t want to go outside. There’s no sunshine. Yeah. So if a picture is worth a thousand words and that’s your profile picture, what it’s basically saying is I’ve got no energy, right? I’m kind of gray. I’m dull and boring. Take that background out. Put something bright in there. Right. A yellow and orange. Magenta. Whatever it is, put something in there. Or even just pure white.
00:17:40:12 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, whites did that.
00:17:44:05 – (Kevin D. Turner): So I use that myself and I put a little edge on it. So it looks like it’s almost like it’s popping out of the picture. Right. But do something. Get rid of that grayish dull background or even a confusing background. See, a lot of people take great outdoor photos. By the time they put them into that little circle, you’re seeing all this black genius and branches and you know, fountain in the background.
00:18:02:17 – (Kevin D. Turner): You’re looking at the fountain. So the person that’s not going to make people connect with you. So simplify that picture and really get that background to pop and say, you know, I’ve got energy. And that’s one of the things that happens a lot with people right now on LinkedIn. The age of LinkedIn is Right. Pretty nicely spread. But there’s a lot of people that are up into that upper zone.
00:18:24:04 – (Kevin D. Turner): And they’re always worried about ageism. Well when you use a gray background it plays into ageism because one of the biggest things in ageism is, you’re not really keeping up with things, right? You don’t have the energy to do what you’re doing, or you don’t have the tech capabilities to make that bright yellow background. Right? So there’s two sides that when you make an adjustment like that, there’s two kinds of hidden stories that come out about you that kind of get rid of the ageism issue. Right. So we always want to be thinking about that
00:18:55:12 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. So as we said, if you are watching us on video, I’m on a gray sofa. So now I’m thinking that I might be yellow, I might need a yellow throw pillow. So I’ll be on Amazon later today. But anyway, that’s great. I love all of that. I’m going to. Yes. And one more profile picture mistake that I’m seeing. And it’s new are the AI pictures.
00:19:22:04 – (Kevin D. Turner): Yeah. I’ll check them out. Right. It doesn’t take much time. I saw one the other day that had multiple rows of teeth, like a shark. I mentioned to the person they actually got a little upset and they said, well, no, you’re right. The top row had two sets of teeth. They didn’t even see it because they looked at it and said, well, that’s actually really nice of me. Or you see somebody with a hand with, you know, four fingers or, you know, three finger
00:19:49:12 – (Brynne Tillman): hands or a big give. You. Sure. Yeah.
00:19:50:04 – (Kevin D. Turner): You got to be real careful with AI. I was going to say, like, any content that’s generated, you know, through a machine process, you’ve got to double check, right? Because I’ve seen some AI photos that aren’t bad, that are actually pretty good of that individual. But the one thing I always caution people, if they’re using it, make sure when you show up, you look like it.
00:20:09:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, that’s what I was going to say,
00:20:11:04 – (Kevin D. Turner): right? Because if you show up and the first thing in the back of their head, they won’t say this, but like, what bus hit you
00:20:21:09 – (Brynne Tillman): know, like between the time you had that during the. That’s right.
00:20:23:04 – (Kevin D. Turner): That’s the booby trap of too good. And it was the same thing that used to happen with people taking the, the, I don’t even know what you call those, the fancy pictures, you know, that you would go to the, the mall and they would take these kind of special pictures of people, and they were all foggy, and you always look 20 years younger and, you know, same issue.
00:20:42:05 – (Kevin D. Turner): If you’re going to use it, you better look like that when you show up. Otherwise all trust is out the door. Even if I shaved my beard off, I would put a new profile picture because if I was going to show up and I didn’t have my beard on when I showed up there, like I’ve been staring at you with a beard.
00:20:58:19 – (Kevin D. Turner): Believe or not, probably like 85% of the people wouldn’t know what was different,
00:21:04:09 – (Brynne Tillman): but they know that something is wrong.
00:21:05:19 – (Kevin D. Turner): Something’s up. This is not the person I’ve been staring at. And trust goes out the door, right? So again, you want it to definitely be current, definitely represent you. And you want it to be inviting. Now I do something kind of quirky on mine. I’m. I always turn
00:21:21:07- (Kevin D. Turner): the reason I turn, believe or not, is because there’s a lot of ID theft out in social media. If you do a complete straight on shot of your face, somebody can grab that, pull it off to the side. They can make passports and driver’s licenses with it, and they’ve got enough information on your profile to really get into identity theft in that sense.
00:21:42:10 – (Kevin D. Turner): So I always say turn slightly. Not as much as I do. I’m cheeky, right? I turn all the way. But if you turn 5%, that’s not something that somebody then can use to create documents.
00:21:54:09 – (Brynne Tillman): Interesting.
00:21:55:10 – (Kevin D. Turner): So that’s why I do it. And you know, with that comes another phenomenon because other people have kind of figured this out, but with it comes the phenomenon of which way do you turn right? So if you’re turning off to your left hand side, when that picture loads to your profile, you’re actually looking into your profile.
00:22:26:09 – (Brynne Tillman): That’s perfect.
00:22:27:10 – (Kevin D. Turner): Turning to the right side, you’re actually looking out of your profile. If you take the concepts of classic advertising and you got this great product in the middle of the page and everybody’s looking away from it, are you ever going to be interested in that product? No, just look at it. Look left. Then you’re looking at it right. You’re going, they like it, I like it.
00:22:37:09 – (Brynne Tillman): It’s great.
00:22:38:10 – (Kevin D. Turner): About the same thing. So some of these real basic principles of advertising, they come into play
00:22:42:25 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. So outside of the profile, do you have any advice in social media strategies that help eliminate personal branding?
00:22:53:14 – (Kevin D. Turner): I think it’s first of all, find out where you want to go, right? And when you are in the midst of your process, understand who can help you get there and how do you then build a relationship with them? And you know, I always say, what works out here works in there. So you don’t go to a networking meeting and start passing out cards and then head back to the office and expect to get any business right now, go to a networking meeting.
00:23:22:11 – (Kevin D. Turner): You talk to somebody long enough that they might say, hey, you have a card that’s going to probably turn into another conversation, right? And you’re going to build upon it. So whatever works out here will work there. Take the same concepts. And people think there’s easy ways to do this on LinkedIn because things in the digital world can be easier, but they still don’t break that principle.
00:23:45:18 – (Kevin D. Turner): It’s got to be able to work out here. So if I start slamming people right with my business card, my direct messaging, it doesn’t mean I’m going to create more business. And it actually might mean the opposite, right? The kind of label that they tell, LinkedIn. You get restricted in the process.
00:24:04:24 – (Kevin D. Turner): People don’t want to do business with you because, you know, when I accepted your connection, you immediately tried to sell me something. And when I tried to be polite and said, I don’t want that, you came back and tried to sell me again. That’s not relationship building. That’s never going to lead to sales. It’s going to do the complete opposite, because I’m going to tell ten other people, don’t ever take this connection. And on the right connecting.
00:24:27:25 – (Brynne Tillman): Right.
00:24:28:27- (Kevin D. Turner): And that’s going to have an effect. So people need to understand that, you know, those kinds of approaches really don’t work anywhere. You know,
00:24:39:25 – (Brynne Tillman): really, really great, great advice. So I have two more questions. Okay. I second to last question is what question should I have asked you that I forgot to
00:24:50:00 – (Kevin D. Turner): oh boy. Yeah. Yeah I you know, I don’t know I don’t know in that sense, you know,
00:24:58:25 – (Brynne Tillman): I would like the one piece of advice you loved to share?
00:25:01:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): Read The Go Giver by Bob Burke. If you haven’t done it, you got to do it. It changed my life very early on. The guy is incredible, too. He’s just an amazing person. If you ever write something great about him and you mention him in there, he’s on it. He’s interacting with you
00:25:20:25 – (Brynne Tillman): and he attempts
00:25:21:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): the concept of, you know, to get what you’ve got to give.And I truly believe in that. And, that would be the one thing I would tell. And I do tell just about everybody I run into. They’ve got to read that book, absorb it. It’s not a hard read. It’s a fairly quick read. You can get it done on a flight or a weekend, but it’s going to have a huge impact. And so that’s one thing I, I always want people to know.
00:25:45:25 – (Brynne Tillman): I love it. I actually have Rachel’s Cafe mug, which is one of the characters in his book. So, I think he’s one of the greatest humans. So I love that you brought that up. And I will say an amazing book, the book that he wrote that changed my career was Endless Referrals.
00:26:07:00 – (Kevin D. Turner): Yeah.
00:26:08:25 – (Brynne Tillman): So that’s an earlier one. And I love it. And that’s where the phrase, by the way, was coined. People do business with and refer to people they know, like and trust. Bob Burke and endless referrals.
00:26:20:00 – (Kevin D. Turner): Yeah he did. He corrected me once and he said, all things equal,
00:26:24:29 – (Brynne Tillman): all things being equal.
00:26:27:00 – (Kevin D. Turner): Right? Then he said, you have to have all things equal. And I was like, you thinking about it was like, well, yeah, because people always argue, well, the price is always going to get it, or the availability is always going to get it. All things equal. If I’m talking to three different people and they’re all basically offering me the same thing, I’m going to go with the one I know, like and trust me,
00:26:44:29 – (Brynne Tillman): love that.
00:26:44:22 – (Kevin D. Turner): And that’s where you’re going to win that business that keeps growing in that process.
00:26:50:29 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that. Love that. My last question is, I’m sure there are tons of listeners there like, oh my gosh, Kevin D. Turner, you are brilliant. I want to work with you. How do I do that?
00:27:02:22 – (Kevin D. Turner): Easiest way. You always find me on LinkedIn, right? Kevin D. Turner I don’t know if there’s too many profiles out there like that, but if you’re looking for me and you understand profiles, put the president on the end of my URL or your URL, take your name out. Put the president. You’ll find me. A lot of people actually find me when they do searches for LinkedIn president, which is kind of fun.
00:27:24:20 – (Kevin D. Turner): That’s one place. I also have my own YouTube channel where I give away a lot of information raising how to be better on and, and, you know, you so you can find me through there. I’m also very open about posting contact info. So you know, my emails there, my phone numbers there. I put it into graphics so it doesn’t get scraped and abused.
00:27:48:22 – (Kevin D. Turner): I’m very open. I will take phone calls from people I don’t know and most people are like you answered the phone. It was like you called me. If you know, and that’s how things begin. Don’t be afraid of it. And a lot of people now, for some strange reason, are totally afraid of making phone calls. And you’d be amazed how many people will pick up a phone if you’re calling for the right reasons.
00:28:11:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): Right. And you’re again, you’re wanting to make a relationship. You’re not looking there just to try to right out the chute, pitch them phone calls, work.
00:28:19:29 – (Brynne Tillman): Absolutely. And I don’t make any calls, though I will have engaged with someone so that when they hear my name, they’re like,
00:28:29:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): absolutely, absolutely agree. That’s one of my rules on LinkedIn, is I won’t send anybody an invite until I’ve had at least seven positive interactions with them on LinkedIn.So that could mean I commented on one of their posts and they commented back, right? Or maybe they commented on one of my posts. So we exchanged an email or whatever it might be. We join the same group and we’re interacting in the group. I don’t want seven of those kinds of engagements. Three well, you know, if you send that invite, you don’t even have to personalize it at that point because it’s already expected.
00:29:08:15 – (Brynne Tillman): Well, I tell you, I personalize.
00:29:11:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): I always do, but I’m always thinking of those people who have basic accounts, what I call freemium, right? If they’ve got freemium, they’re limited to three a month.
00:29:20:15 – (Brynne Tillman): I know that’s
00:29:23:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): if you’re trying to find a job or discover new sales opportunities or help other people. Three and going to cut it so you better start building relationships so that when you send that blank one there, it gets a huge response rate, right? Then I’m getting somewhere
00:29:35:15 – (Brynne Tillman): that makes so much sense.
00:29:38:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): Yeah, I mean, in blank response rates, which most people will tell you that the blank invites are only getting like a 3,040% acceptance rate. I’m getting in the upper 90s, and it’s
00:29:51:15 – (Brynne Tillman): because you’ve engaged so much already.
00:29:53:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): You wait for that relationship.
00:29:54:15 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So I will share it if that’s the case when they accept the connection request, make sure you send a message right away that says why are you connected with them? So in a year from now, when you go back, you remember why you connected. That is my number one reason
00:30:15:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): I like that. And I’m really big on audio messaging. Yeah, that’s your messaging. Especially if they’re real big video people. Right? Then I will send them a video message. It’s a little more work, but I, you know, I’m a one shot guy, so that’s how I do too.
00:30:29:28 – (Kevin D. Turner): Oh, I don’t edit. But those two components, I’m amazed how many people are just completely blown away when they receive that and how many times I’m told that’s the first one I’ve ever had on LinkedIn. And I didn’t even know you could do that.
00:30:47:15 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah,
00:30:48:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): and that’s a conversation starter in a, in a, in a sense right there. And they’re connected to you because you’ve just told them something brilliant. They could do that. Nobody else is doing it. Right. Something as simple as that. And you didn’t pitch it. Sell it. You just offered it to them. They saw it and they saw the advantage because of the way it made them feel.
00:31:08:15 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that you became human. If you became human in their eyes, right? Like it moved it from a connection to a person.
00:31:18:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): Exactly,
00:31:20:15 – (Brynne Tillman): I love it. I think you’re fabulous. Yeah. Thank you.Thank you, my friend. This was great. I had so much fun. And, to all of our listeners, make sure you are following Kevin D. Turner, go to his YouTube channel. It is phenomenal. Go subscribe. Follow his content.you will. It doesn’t ever disappoint. It’s brilliant. Kevin, thank you so much for being part of our community and for all the value you bring to all of us LinkedIn trainers. I, we couldn’t be as good as we are without you.
00:31:58:21 – (Kevin D. Turner): So bring you rock and I appreciate it. And I hope you have a fabulous week this week.
00:32:02:15 – (Brynne Tillman): You too. And to all our listeners, when you’re out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social.
Outro:
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