Episode 422: Writing a Powerful LinkedIn About Summary for Sales Professionals

Intro

00:00:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, me, and 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.  Enjoy the show!

00:01:11:13 – (Bob Woods): Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining us for making sales social live. Coming to you from the social sales link, virtual Studios and brought to you by askSSL, that’s the QR code that I’m going to get this wrong right down there in the corner there. If you want to learn more about our AI tool and everything that we offer to you so that you can explore AI for yourself but it really, really helps you with almost anything you have to do in sales. So I’m Bob Woods. Brynne Tillman is off, but I am joined by Stan Robinson Jr. Stan, how are you doing today?

00:01:50:11 – (Stan Robinson Jr): Doing great. Thanks, Bob. Good to be here. 

00:01:54:13 – (Bob Woods): Good beards. Good to have you here. And it’s good to be here as well because we talk a lot and I mean a lot about your LinkedIn profile. It’s so important for you as a sales person, the profile, because, you know, it’s where you truly get to show your value that you can bring to your audience of customers. So you can start those all important first conversations without being salesy. That’s a phrase that I love. And yet it’s very true as well. You’re about summary is an integral part of your LinkedIn profile, as it’s one of the first sections your audience of prospects will see on your LinkedIn profile

00:02:33:12 – (Bob Woods): after what we call the top of the fold section, which is your headline, your photo, and your banner image. So we’re here to show you what should go into your about section. If you are a sales person, you really want to maximize and squeeze the proverbial juice out of every word, sentence, and character. And yes, there are 2600 characters and spaces allowed in the profile, so you can’t write War and Peace essentially. So, but you need that stuff in there so that you can secure those conversations. And your LinkedIn about section is going to go so far in helping you do that. Stan, any thoughts before we delve into it? And that’s an inside joke there, everyone. So, 

00:03:17:11 – (Stan Robinson Jr): yes, indeed. Yeah. So many people under utilized the about section will come to their profile and maybe they have a headline with their title and then three sentences in the about section. And so most people aren’t aware how much space they have available. So that’s why it’s important you mention that 2600 characters take advantage of

00:03:40:14 – (Bob Woods): yeah, yeah take advantage of them. But at this point we’re not going to go into this specifically. But you know, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do something. So keep that in mind. You don’t have to go to like 2597 if it really just doesn’t make sense. But that’s another story for another time. So along with this webinar, we do have an e-book that is no damn, I did it wrong again up there. The QR code for it is its and the address for it is social sales link. Com slash powerful about. So that’s all one word powerful about social sales link.com/powerful about everything that we’re going to be talking about in here is also in that e-book. So that you can have that

00:04:27:14 – (Bob Woods): at your side. If you want. You know along with obviously if you want to have it pulled up in your Spotify or your Apple or whatever as well, this, this particular episode. But before you change anything in your profile and this is important, make sure to save your old profile in a PDF. Now you’re like, okay, how do I do that? LinkedIn actually makes it really easy. First you go to your profile. There’s a button in the top of the fold section called more. You’ll clip on. You’ll click rather on that and then select save to PDF at that point, LinkedIn will convert it to a PDF. And then go ahead and download that to your computer. You always want to have an old copy because just in case something happens

00:05:17:17 – (Bob Woods): or you just want to see what you had before, you want to have that in there, right? Stan?

00:05:22:10 – (Stan Robinson Jr): Yep, exactly. And LinkedIn always keeps making our lives interesting because in some cases you may see a more button on your profile. On mine, I have resources. 

00:05:34:17 – (Bob Woods): Oh that’s right. Yeah. 

00:05:36:10 – (Stan Robinson Jr): You don’t see more. Check resources and you’ll see that option. 

00:05:44:17 – (Bob Woods): Excellent, excellent, good good advice there you know sometimes we have a view of some things and yet other people are like well no I see this and I like well yeah unfortunately that’s that’s because of LinkedIn. Sometimes it shows things a little bit differently. They’re always testing things and things like that. So we can’t help it folks. We just rock with it as things come along. So with that, Stan, why don’t you go ahead and talk about the first thing and one thing that you’re going to notice about all these is we’re basically going to be talking about everything from the very top of the about section and then going through it.

00:06:18:04 – (Bob Woods): So there are definite sections. You don’t have to label them as sections, but they kind of think of them as sections within your mind to, you know, Stan. Step one for me. Step two. Those are actually like sections within the profile as well. And if you want to see properly what we think our proper layout least about sections, you could go to either Stan’s profile or my profile within LinkedIn, Stan Robertson Jr or Bob woods and Bob wood, depending on what you want to do. So go ahead Stan.

00:06:45:12 – (Stan Robinson Jr): Yep. Good. So one of the main things that we talk about is providing value to your audience, where you train to think of your LinkedIn profile, or most people are trained to think of it as a resume. Yes, you’re in sales. You need to change that mindset because your audience, whoever you’re selling to, has no interest in what a great salesperson you are or how often you’ve hit Presidents Club. They’re interested in one thing, and that is what you can do for them, how you can help them achieve their objectives. So your section needs to start by talking about them and the challenges or issues that they are facing in their specific role or industry. So you want it to resonate with them such that when they look at it, they start with your headline and say, oh, okay, what may be of interest?

00:07:52:14 – (Stan Robinson Jr): Let me scroll further down because they want to learn more about you. When they get to your about section,you want it to begin with a paragraph that talks about them, the challenges that they’re facing, and further down how you can help. But at the beginning, you need to be talking about them and their challenges so that they’re clear that you’re writing to them and they want to read further up anything that to add to that.

00:08:24:16 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So essentially what you need to do is hopefully you’ve you’ve seen some of our other content about the top of the fold and really identifying even up there about, you know, who you help, how you help them, the services you provide and the results that you bring, that should almost kind of flow through into your about section. So you’re almost like telling a story as you’re going through this. But the story isn’t about you. It’s about them. So you really need to make sure that you are speaking to them and not at them either. Which as you go through here, you’re you’re going to hear, oh, this is really about them. It is about them.

00:09:06:02 – (Bob Woods): You are talking to them just a little bit like you’re having a conversation with them rather than being on stage and talking at people. It’s not like that at all.

00:09:15:15 – (Stan Robinson Jr): Yeah. So talk about the fact that a lot of the work that goes into building a great LinkedIn profile and strategy takes place off of LinkedIn, because, as you can probably guess, in order to talk specifically to an audience, you need to have a very clear idea of who that audience is. So, everything we’re talking about here presupposes that you have a very clear, ideal customer profile.

00:09:45:24 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. And you even want to do, you know, build avatars or avatars about exactly who that person is, it’s interesting because I was talking with with the manager of the gym that I go to and, they’re a franchisee, and the franchisor has an avatar and I forget what it was, is something like, a 35 year old woman, professionally driven, maybe kids, maybe not tattooed, and is really driven for result in everything that they do.

00:10:16:12 – (Bob Woods): That’s a really, really good start for an avatar when it comes to customers. I thought the tattoo thing was kind of funny. When you think about it, and especially when you see the people at my gym and they’re how cool I love them and everything else. Yeah, that’s the type of people that they attract. And they’re very good at getting them in. So with that let’s move on to number two. So that is bringing their challenge kind of into what it is you provide. Now it’s very important that you don’t say you have the solution to their problem. Hey I got you. Here’s what I do. That tells them nothing about how you’re actually going to help them. And remember that’s what this is all about. So instead you need to resonate with the challenges that they’re facing by, you know, maybe briefly mentioning what you do

00:11:10:03 – (Bob Woods): and especially potentially the people you have helped without getting into the nitty gritty details at that point, because, again, A, you only have 2600 characters and be they’re still learning about you, so you don’t want to go into sales mode, which, you know, you really should never have to go into sales mode.But if you do think like like that, this is definitely not the point. To do that, you really need to continue to tell that story and then start bringing them into your solution. Stand here. Anything there,

00:11:42:05 – (Stan Robinson Jr): not anything to add to that. That was what was spot on. 

00:11:46:05 – (Bob Woods): Okay,okay. So why don’t you go ahead with the next one, which would most definitely dovetail out of what I just said.

00:11:54:16 – (Stan Robinson Jr): Yes. Exactly. Because we’ve talked about leading with something that resonates with your audience and then connecting it with your solution without being overly salesy. Now, one of the things that you talk about all the time is don’t tell people you help them, just help them. So the next thing that we suggest is teaching them something new. In other words, give some exam samples, get some advice, give them a taste

00:12:31:11 – (Stan Robinson Jr): of what you do and how you add value to them. The ideal situation, if you can, is if you can teach them something that they did not realize before. So they kind of go hadn’t thought of it that way before so that they want to learn more. 

00:12:57:05 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. 

00:12:58:11 – (Stan Robinson Jr): So yeah, some specific tips that can help them do their job better. You never have to worry about giving away too much information, because if you can cover all the value that you offer to someone in a 2600 character or about section, you need to expand the amount of value that you’re able to offer. So just give them some solid advice so that they will want to learn more about what you do.

00:13:32:02 – (Bob Woods): And the one thing that I’ve discovered when you do that is that when you teach somebody something, and I think this is pretty universal, they start to not only want to learn more, just in general, but you’re actually opening their minds to new ideas that whilst as well stuff that they hadn’t thought about. And that’s where hopefully your solution comes in to truly help with whatever that problem is, that they are at your profile to learn about.

00:13:59:01 – (Stan Robinson Jr): Exactly. 

00:14:00:21 – (Bob Woods): So with that, let’s go to number four. This is the part that traditional salespeople are going to salivate over a little bit, but you still need to pull back a little bit. And that’s how you can help along with a call to action. So after you teach them something new, after you’ve got them in the mindset to where they want to learn more and maybe even think about things a little bit differently, now, it’s time to lead them specifically to your solution. You do that by, at least at the beginning, writing about how you can help them fix or implement the thing that they’ve learned from you, whatever that is, blah, blah, blah. And we all do all types of different things. So it’s pretty tough to really get granular. There.

00:14:41:03 – (Bob Woods): Then you follow it with a call to action that could sound something like this. So if you’ve resonated with this and you’re looking to explore new ways to do whatever it is you do, let’s chat. Whether or not we decide to work together, I’m confident that our talk can bring some insight and value to you. So again, it’s all about insights and value to them, not what you want to talk about, not what your goals are. Not that, oh my God, I need to close this next deal. Otherwise blah blah blah whatever. It’s still all about them. And when you lead them to your solution, you really have to do it in a way that is still talking about them, talking about their problems, and talking about really

00:15:31:13 – (Bob Woods):  how things fit in and how you can help specifically too. So sometimes it might be, you know, you want to talk about just your solution or it might be your solution. Plus how you help in implementing that solution in whatever it is that they’re doing as well. That can go in a wide variety of ways. Again, if you want to see how it’s done right, go to mine or stands or even Brynne’s profile. Brynne Tillman,

00:15:54:07 – (Bob Woods): we all have our profiles built out like that. That’s probably the easiest way for you to do that is to just see it on a computer screen or a phone that’s right in front of you. Stan.

00:16:05:10 – (Stan Robinson Jr): Yep. So if someone has taken the trouble to read that this far down in your about section, they’re interested because you’ve started with content that resonates with them. It’s relevant. You’ve actually given them some tips that they can use, even if they never contact you again. And now you’re tying everything together, saying, explain even more specifically how you can help. So, Bob, if you want, I’ll just go to the next.

00:16:36:07 – (Bob Woods): Yeah that goes well, we’re all right into it because again, all of this stuff flows very well. It flows like in its own section, but it flows among things really, really well. So that led you to what Stan is about. Ready to tell you or he is ready to tell you.

00:16:53:24 – (Stan Robinson Jr): So even though it may sound, duplicative or counter-intuitive, we suggest that you put your contact information now, whatever you’re comfortable with, lots of salespeople will put their mobile phone number at the bottom of their about section because they want people to call them.There are other options. If you’re not comfortable putting your phone number, you can put your email. You can put a calendar link. As Bob said. Now, if you’d like to learn more, let’s connect. And whether or not we choose to work or you choose to work with us, we’re confident that you will have some takeaways as a result of a conversation.

00:17:34:24 – (Stan Robinson Jr): So a lot of times people will say, well, can’t we just go back up to contact information on your profile? All you have to right there. But think about it. Well, to speak for myself, I’m lazy. Yeah, I don’t know about anybody else, but if I’ve taken the time to read someone’s entire about section, I’m interested enough to want to take the next step. The easier they can make it for me to do that, the better. I don’t want to have to go hunt for their contact information. So if you’ve dropped your email there or a phone number or a calendar link that I can just click, set up a time to talk further with you, so much the better.

00:18:19:24 – (Stan Robinson Jr): And so you’re just making it easy for people to take the next step. Get a hold of you before they get interrupted by the next phone call or email notification, or someone walks into their office if they’re still walking, working on site and they forget about you. So that’s why it’s so important. Just go ahead and right there at the bottom of their about section, while there’s then still you front and center in their mind, you make it easy for them to contact you.

00:18:52:09 – (Bob Woods): And quite frankly, the other thing is that a lot of people don’t even know about the contact that that little contact links up there. So this also just makes it easier just from that regard. I mean, because otherwise they’ll go, oh God, I don’t want to connect with this person for whatever reason. Hopefully they actually will want to connect with you. But there are a wide variety of reasons why people you know are still a little bit hesitant at that point. If you give them the information there and make it really easy, they don’t need to know about the contact info section because it’s right there. And the one thing that you can do if you don’t, if you want to have a phone number out there, but you don’t want your specific phone number out there,

00:19:33:11 – (Bob Woods): sign up for a Google Number account or a service like that to where you can put a phone number out there that forwards to your phone, but without having your phone number out there. So with that, we’ve got two quick bonus tips for you. If you have a page that you want to take your audience to, you can add another call to action after your contact details, directing people to scroll down to your featured section and then ask them to click on precisely where you want them to click.So if you have like a video that you’d really like to show them before they reach out to you, just mention that so they scroll down. The featured section should be the very next thing that they see. Make sure that that video is in the first position. There so they don’t have to scroll

00:20:23:15 – (Bob Woods): through the, a carousel there that gets popped up in case you have more than three up there and, you know, just put that video or web page or, download a PDF, whatever you want to put it there. That’s probably the best and easiest way to do that. And then if you’re curious about whether you should place the details about what you or your company do in detail in your about section and what your role is in helping them solve that should all go in the experience section, because all of that speaks to your experience. Your experience section is where you get to talk about yourself. It’s where you get to tell your story about why you’re doing what you’re doing, how you like to help customers, that type of thing.

00:21:10:18 – (Bob Woods): That’s where you put all that stuff in there. But even then, make sure that it’s at least customer focused so that they’re getting something out of it, even though you are talking about yourself. So again, that e-book is that social sales link com slash powerful about stand. You want to add anything

00:21:28:10 – (Stan Robinson Jr): that I think pretty much wraps it up. You’ll notice that the theme throughout this is offering value and keeping the conversation to them to the greatest extent that you can, and offering people an easy button by putting your calendar link, a phone number, Google number at the bottom of the about section. So those are the things that come to mind for me, that

00:21:53:00 – (Bob Woods): could not have ended things any better than that. So whether you’ve been in with us live or recorded via our podcast, we really appreciate you joining us for this episode of Making Sales Social Live. Brought to you by Ask SSL why we do these live sessions every week. So, you know, join us if you’re listening to us on our podcast, which means you’re listening to the recorded version of this and you haven’t subscribed already. That’s what that Follow our Subscribe button is there for, so that you can access all of our previous shows and be alerted when new ones drop. And you know, we like, like and comment there too.

00:22:30:22 – (Bob Woods): Besides these LinkedIn lines, we also interview leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business and many more areas. So catch those episodes as well. You can find those on Apple, Spotify, all of the usual subjects there. We also have a web page for the podcast as well. socialsaleslink.com/podcast. So when you’re out and about this week and every week, be sure that you’re making your sales 

00:22:56:10 – (Stan Robinson Jr): social.

00:22:57:19 – (Bob Woods): Excellent, excellent. Thanks everybody. Have a great day. Have a great week. Bye bye. 

00:23:02:10 – (Stan Robinson Jr): Bye y’all.

Outro:

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