Episode 424: Start Conversations with Your LinkedIn 1st-degree Connections Without Being Salesy

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!

 0:00:49 – (Bob Woods): Hey everyone, how are you doing? Thanks for joining us for Making Sales Social Live. Coming to you from the Social Sales Sync virtual studios and brought to you by AskSSL AI. I’m Bob Woods. I’m joined by Stan Robinson Jr., and Brynne Tillman. How y’ all doing today?

0:01:06 – (Brynne Tillman): Great, Bob. How are you?

0:01:09 – (Bob Woods): Doing well, great.

0:01:12 – (Brynne Tillman): Awesome, awesome. I’m very excited about this very simple topic, but there’s so much to talk about.

0:01:17 – (Bob Woods): There’s so much to it. Yeah. And we’re going to start off with a simple question for you. How many people are you connected to on LinkedIn as a first degree? Now, before you answer that, here’s a better question. How many people in your first degree group do you actually know? You’re likely connected to hundreds, maybe even thousands of people, but you’ve never had a real conversation with them. And I’m not talking about sales conversations at this point, I’m talking about any conversations.

0:01:51 – (Bob Woods): That’s why we’re here today, to help you jumpstart those talks without being salesy. And guys, I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen someone on LinkedIn when I’ve given a really good comment and they’re a first degree connection. I’m just like, oh, wow, it’s been a while, or oh, wow, I don’t know that person. I’m sure you guys know that as well.

0:02:15 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, well, I’m excited about this because here’s the thing, about 10% of the people that are first degree connections are people we want to have a conversation with. So on average, I read now the average person on LinkedIn has 1200 connections. That means there are 120 people in your connection list that you should be having conversations with that you’re ignoring. And we’re all guilty of this, even us. And we know how to do this. But we still have hundreds, if not thousands of people that we should be talking to. So we’re going to talk today about how we start conversations with these folks in a way that matters to them. Right. We talk about it may not be a sales conversation, it just may be a conversation. And as people that are responsible for growing business, we want it to lead to our solution, but we don’t want to lead with our solution.

0:03:13 – (Brynne Tillman): And so there’s so many ways that we can start conversations. But before we jump into that, let’s talk about how we identify that 10%.

0:03:22 – (Bob Woods): Actually, before we do even that, we have an e book for you that’s going to help you with all of this and even includes a crispy formatted AI prompt that helps you along with a part of this process, but is a very important part of this process. You can find that. Keep going, Bren.

0:03:41 – (Brynne Tillman): All right, from the top, SocialSalesLink.com conversations will get you to the ebook, which is great. Okay, so let’s talk about how we take inventory so we can export our connections? You may have gone into the area to export your connections and you may say, where did that feature go? Well, it’s hiding. You have to export everything, the full kit and caboodle in order to get your connections. But you can do that under data privacy. Get a copy of your data, download it all, and typically within a couple of hours you’ll get a CSV file that you can then open up that has first name, last name, a place for email. Although there’s not a ton of people that opt in to give you that link back to their LinkedIn profile, their company name, their job title and the date you connected. So the newest one is on top. It’s kind of fun to go down and see who was my first connection. You can do that there.

0:04:42 – (Brynne Tillman): Now what we recommend is you create a column on the left hand side and we call it take inventory. It conducts cpr. So that means when we’re taking inventory cpr, identify our clients, our prospects and our referral partners. And one out of 10 on average will be people that we mark a C, a P or an R. And those are people that we want to have conversations with. Stan, why don’t you talk a little bit about how we even drill down?

0:05:12 – (Brynne Tillman): Even better. By searching for them on LinkedIn versus the exported list.

0:05:18 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Yep. So in terms of first base search. Yes, yes. So we talk about setting up search filters with your ideal customer profile, which can be everything from location to title to industry, whatever filters are that are relevant. And then bookmarking that if you’re on free LinkedIn or if you’re in sales nav, you could Just save it. But then once you’ve set that up, what you can do from there is open up what we call just base search. There’s a reason for that, but it’s your ICP basically based on LinkedIn’s filters and select first.

0:05:56 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): So you’re just looking at your first degree connections. And that’s one way that LinkedIn and of course Sales Navigator, which has even more filters, can help you start to narrow it down.

0:06:07 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that. Yeah, that’s perfect. And by the way, we can search icp, which I would say is a prospect or client, and you can also search your ideal networking partners. Like for us, we don’t typically sell to sales trainers, but sales trainers are perfect referral partners for us. So you can find those folks as well. We want to start conversations with them as well. So now that we’ve identified the 10% of the people in our network that we want to have conversations with, let’s review.

0:06:43 – (Brynne Tillman): Let’s each kind of do a round robin. One way that you start conversations with first degree connections. And Bob, I sort of took over when you said take over. So you go next. We’re first. What is one way that you start first degree conversations with first degree connection?

0:07:02 – (Bob Woods): There we go. You know, commenting on one of their posts is probably the easiest way to do it. So you know, you can. Obviously you would need to actually find that person who has commented recently. But at that point what you can do is very easily make your first comment and make sure it’s not like a great post or agree with that post and that’s it. You have to make sure that the comment acknowledges the value that was originally brought by the first degree person who was commenting.

0:07:33 – (Bob Woods): You can add some additional value to that as well because you really want to show yourself to be an expert. Again, not in that salesy way. Don’t talk about your product or anything like that. Just brings forth some value that’s going to actually genuinely help someone. That’s all you need to do. And then a little later what you can do is reach out to them, whether it’s via an IM message, just that you type out.

0:08:01 – (Bob Woods): One thing that I would recommend doing because so few people do it is a video message. So you actually say, you know, hey John, I saw your recent post on whatever topic and it really stuck with me. I’ve been thinking about that exact issue. Would love to hear more about how you’re approaching it and just take things from there. It can be that simple to do.

0:08:24 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that I’m going to piggyback on that in a couple of ways. You can also go out and find more content on that topic and start a conversation. Hey Jane, I really loved the post you put out there. You’ve already liked and commented so it’s authentic and she knows you engaged on it. Recently came across a podcast or an article or a X, Y and Z on a similar topic. Let me know if you’re interested. I’m happy to send you a link.

0:08:53 – (Brynne Tillman): And so now we start to talk about the topic first. So I love that I know I said one thing, but I’m going to just finish this thought and then we’ll go to Stan’s thing. But you can actually search. Not with the deep searches unfortunately, but you can search for content that’s posted recently from your first degree connections and people you follow. So in the search bar, similar to where Stan talked about how do we find first degree connections?

0:09:27 – (Brynne Tillman): We can now click on posts instead of people, a news feed, just content from our first degree connections. Quite honestly, I don’t ever look at my homepage ever. I go right to this and of course I’m using Sales Navigator, which gives us an enormous amount of insight. But you can even in the free create a list of those people that are sharing content in one place. And then I recommend when you create that, bookmark it and then you can click every day. And if you choose the latest filter, every time you click on that bookmark, you’re getting the most recent shared content at the top.

0:10:13 – (Brynne Tillman): All right Stan, over to you. What’s something you do to start conversations with your first degree connection?

0:10:20 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): Just one thing to piggyback on what you just said. Bookmarks are such an underutilized tool. They’re so powerful if you just use them because they’re dynamic. Yeah, your content keeps updating. So as Bryn just mentioned, you’re always going to get the most recent content if you set the filter up that way. One thing that I’ll mention about reconnecting is, especially if it’s someone I haven’t been in touch with, that could be years, I’m embarrassed to say, but I call elephant in the room right after that by if I’m sending a LinkedIn DM and say I’ll say we connected back in whatever the time was because you can look at right on their profile the contact information, see when you connected and say it’s been a while since we connected back in March or whatever 2018.

0:11:08 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): But I came across something that made me think of you. And if you’re open to it. I’d love to reconnect. Because we never really talked. So we connected for a reason. And that is one of the reasons also that we strongly suggest that you send a welcome message when you connect with someone, including some context about why you connected or how you met. Because then you can always go back to it and refresh your memory.

0:11:35 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): So those are a couple of things. Just calling out if it’s been a while and giving them a reason why I’d like to have a conversation because we never did it in many cases.

0:11:46 – (Brynne Tillman): Perfect. Bob, do you have another one?

0:11:49 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah. It’s like I know all this stuff and yet it’s really interesting. So. Yeah, no, I.

0:11:55 – (Brynne Tillman): So polls are a great way to reach all hover sections. Publish a poll around a topic that your network would care about. Here’s kind of a real hint around this or what LinkedIn does really, really well is if you come across a poll, you can see how many people have voted. But until you vote, you can’t see how they voted. So if you can come up with a poll that people are going to be really interested in how other people voted, they’re even more likely to vote. You can also send an invitation to up to 10 people blind. Copy that time to vote.

0:12:34 – (Brynne Tillman): So you can. Once you have a poll, you can click send and choose up to 10 people with a little note that says recently put out a poll. I’d love your one click vote. Once the poll closes, I’m happy to share the insights I gleaned or we gleaned from that poll so you can proactively get them to vote. It’s a great way to start conversations at scale, scale and even to test the waters and who wants to engage.

0:13:00 – (Brynne Tillman): So. And once you’ve taken inventory, whether you exported your connections or you created that list, it becomes a really great way to leverage that list. Right. What do I do now? I have the people. This is a great way. Another one is events. So we have this event making sales on social media almost every single Monday if there’s not a major U.S. holiday. And this is an opportunity for us to invite people.

0:13:29 – (Brynne Tillman): Now, I will say we do not take advantage of this as much as we should. So I’m teaching this to myself as much as to everyone out there. You can invite up to a thousand people a week to an event and it’s amazing how very effective it is. Another idea, I just recently launched a newsletter. I know I’m late to the game. We had one for, for social sales Link. But I recently launched an end without going too deep into it, it was almost accidental. I thought it was going to be an article. But it was a newsletter that I launched and it went, thank goodness, it was good content. But it went out to my entire network and I have a lot of people in my network. But now, over the last six or seven weeks, I have over 7,000 people that have opted into my newsletter.

0:14:25 – (Brynne Tillman): So the bottom line in this is you can use that newsletter to start conversations as well. So that newsletter, you can ask questions, it’s getting pushed out. You can lead them to, to, you can lead them to a poll in that newsletter at scale. Scale. So I have more. But if you guys want.

0:14:44 – (Bob Woods): I thought of one. I thought of one. When they view your profile. Yeah. So your profile. Another slept on a feature of LinkedIn that they’ve had almost since the very beginning and yet a lot of people don’t use it or they look at it and they go, oh, that’s interesting. And you know, that’s like it. You really need to use it in a way that’s effective. And one of the most effective ways to do it is to.

0:15:12 – (Bob Woods): For first degree specific people who viewed your profile because, well, no matter who views your profile, they stop by for a reason. Why not find out why. And it’s really effective with your first degree because they’re already there. So there’s a chance that something that, you know, they viewed your content or maybe they thought of something, they stopped by really quick. Maybe your profile is put together like this.

0:15:38 – (Bob Woods): So well that they actually got an answer for whatever problem that they were thinking of that they thought of you for in the first place. So what you can do there, it’s really simple. You just reply to them again either with a basic text message, with a voice message. I’ve been getting more and more voice messages lately that’s been interesting or via a video message and just say, you know, hey Tom, thanks for stopping by my profile.

0:16:05 – (Bob Woods): Been a while since we touched base last. Was there something specific that caught your eye that brought you here? If you’re open, I’d love to catch up. Yeah, it can’t be that simple.

0:16:15 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that.

0:16:16 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, absolutely.

0:16:17 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m going to share. We’ve got a lot of people on right now. We’d love to hear what you’re doing to start conversations. Go ahead and put that in chat. I should have done that earlier. But we’d love to hear from you guys as well. But we do have a nice little crowd, so.

0:16:30 – (Bob Woods): Yes, we do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’d love to hear from y’. All. And if you’re not and you’re looking to learn more, put that in the chat too. But if you also find yourself in that situation, you’re in the right place, not only listening to this podcast, but because of the ebook that we have as well. So it goes through all of this stuff. There are some additional things in the E book that we’re not really talking about here.

0:16:54 – (Bob Woods): It’s a great resource to have. It’s@SocialSalesLink.com Conversations with an S SocialSalesLink.com Conversations and the correct link is in the chat now in LinkedIn for this LinkedIn Live as well. So you can just go ahead and click through from there. We also have the QR code for it. If you’re watching us live right now in the upper left hand corner.

0:17:21 – (Brynne Tillman): Dan, do you have any other ways that you’re starting conversations with folks?

0:17:25 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): One takes a little bit more creativity, but I follow some sports, for example. So when March Madness or Super Bowl comes around, if someone is in a town where their team is like a March Final Four March Madness super bowl, since you can search by location, you can reach out to your first degree connections. You know, saying hey, if you were Kansas City last year, sorry, I’m not.

0:17:54 – (Brynne Tillman): Sorry, I’m an Eagles fan.

0:17:59 – (Stan Robinson, Jr): But the point being, if you’re looking for a point of commonality, that’s the way to do it. I know the Indy 500 is in Indianapolis every year, so that’s one other way that you can be a little bit creative here if you’re willing to put some work in.

0:18:13 – (Brynne Tillman): I love Bobby Lee Clark. I use LinkedIn Live newsletter and polls. Excellent. I love that.

0:18:20 – (Bob Woods): Good stuff, good stuff there.

0:18:23 – (Brynne Tillman): And I’m just going to share a couple of quick. I’m not going to go deep into the strategy. Maybe we can in the future but change jobs, birthdays, anniversaries, all opportunities to start conversations. And you can get to that in the My Network tab. Unfortunately at this moment you can’t organize them into the way that we used to be able to. But if they are all there and so those are great ways to start conversations with first degree connections.

0:18:56 – (Brynne Tillman): Also similar to Stan saying, like this takes more work, but you could do prospects by interview. So you know, whether it’s a podcast or you’re pro, you’ve got someone on a live stream and you’re having conversations with networking partners. Right. And that now you’re building rapport with someone that can refer business and you can for business to them. So there’s so many different ways to start these conversations with first degree connections.

0:19:25 – (Brynne Tillman): My last thought around this is you’ve got to start conversations around topics that they care about, not topics you want to talk about. That’s the difference, right? Often we’ll jump in and we’re all victims of, hey, I’d love to talk to you about how we helped another customer like you do X, Y and Z. And that does not start trust based conversations. Trust based conversations start with building real rapport and ultimately detaching from what that prospect is worth to you and attaching to what you are worth to the prospect.

0:20:03 – (Bob Woods): That just made me think of something that I was just thinking about over the weekend. It’s kind of a flip on our prospect by influencers. Let’s say that you’re listening to a podcast that either has the influencer as the host or has the influencer as a guest potentially too. And you’re like, that was a really good point. And then what you can do with that is then go into LinkedIn, go into search, do a search by followers of Perfect that person.

0:20:34 – (Bob Woods): And then because at that point, because you’ve just heard them, it’s assuming that it’s the most recent episode or like an episode before or something like that, it’s going to be a timely topic. So that will resonate as well. You reach out to them. And Bryn probably has the more exact wording for that type of thing at the top of her head than I do right now. But basically, hey, I noticed that, that, that, that you’re a follower of, of X. I just heard the podcast on why if you’re interested, I could send you the link to the podcast or something like that, essentially.

0:21:07 – (Brynne Tillman): So, but I would add in here were some of my takeaways from.

0:21:11 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, takeaways. Yeah, absolutely.

0:21:12 – (Brynne Tillman): And if you’re interested, let me know. Matti’s in the link. But that was perfect. Yep. Sari is asking to give instructions on how to bookmark for comments. So you can bookmark any URL in Chrome or Edge or whatever, whatever browser you’re using. So this is not a LinkedIn feature, it’s actually a browser feature. So typically there’s a little star at the top. We hit the star, we create a new folder and I call it link my LinkedIn folder or LinkedIn search folder.

0:21:42 – (Brynne Tillman): And you can actually rename each of those searches. So if you do that first degree list, you can that and it’s like, oh, that’s a great list and you click bookmark and name it my first degree and whatever other filters, you can now go back to that and if you connect with someone new that meets that criteria, they are automatically added into that list. So if you guys have questions like this, come to our Be Our Guest coaching. We do that every third Thursday of the month and you can find information around that @SocialSalesLink.com

0:22:18 – (Brynne Tillman): events and we can show you how to do all these things. So socialsaleslink.com events come with your questions, just like that one and we’ll walk you through it.

0:22:29 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a perfect opportunity. And I mean during, during those events, during the Be Our guest, we do LinkedIn, we do social selling questions. We do AI questions. A lot of AI questions as well because that is us too. So feel free to do that. Also again, feel free to go ahead and download that ebook that we’re specifically talking about today @socialsales link.com Conversations with an S at the end. Conversion Conversations.

0:22:57 – (Brynne Tillman): Woohoo. We did it.

0:23:00 – (Bob Woods): We did it, we did it. And we did it all in just about a half an hour, which is always our goal. So whether you’ve been listening to us live or recorded via our podcast, thanks for joining us for this episode of Making Sales Social Live sponsored by aAsk SSL AI. We do our live sessions every week, almost every week, Labor Day, which is coming up for us here pretty quick in the US. We ain’t going to be here, but every other time, you know, practically every other time we will be. So join us. If you’re listening to us on our podcast, go ahead and hit that subscribe or Follow button. It really does help us when it comes to people discovering us and what it is that we do. Also, feel free to drop a like and a comment as well.

0:23:42 – (Bob Woods): Besides these LinkedIn lives, we also interview leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business and many more areas. So catch those episodes as well. If you’d like more info on our podcast, go to socialsaleslink.com podcast again socialsaleslink.com podcast so when you are out and about this week and every week, be sure to make your sales. Thanks everybody.

Outro:

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