Episode 428: Start LinkedIn Conversations with Insight and Value

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, 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!

00:00:47:14 – (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 Ask Sell a. I’m Bob Woods, I’m joined by Stan Robinson Jr., and Brynne Tillman. How’s everyone doing this? Fine. Monday. 

00:01:08:07 – (Brynne Tillman): Fabulous.

00:01:11:14 – (Bob Woods): Excellent. Very, very good and very enthusiastic, too, I like that. Let’s go ahead and just roll right into today’s subject. So do you want to know why your sales prospecting efforts are probably failing? It’s not because people don’t want your offer. It’s because you’re likely coming out of the gate with what you want, rather than building trust first with your prospects. Now here’s the thing: buyers are savvy.

00:01:39:18 – (Bob Woods): They can spot a pitch a mile away. I mean, you can spot one, right? We all here can spot when we get pitched too constantly. You can identify it too. Here’s the thing though. Your buyers don’t want to be sold; they want to be seen, heard, understood. They want to have pure conversations. They don’t want just another campaign tossed in their face, or to go through yet another SDR qualifying call.

00:02:08:20 – (Bob Woods): You know, that type of thing. That’s where linked In Insight exchanges come in. Instead of sending cold pitches or tired connection requests, or not even sending anything in your connection request at all, inside exchanges invite real conversations between peers. It’s not about selling. It’s about sharing ideas and learning from each other and then earning the right to go deeper.

00:02:37:15 – (Bob Woods): Now, Brynne said something that’s really great about the Insight exchange during our weekly meeting earlier today. She said that instead of networking, this is really about, hey, I want to network with you, which is really important, I think, nowadays. Right, guys? 

00:02:54:07 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. And actually what I’m speaking really, it’s this is that new networking, right. Like this means that it’s not just, hey, let’s learn about each other. And then if something comes up, I can refer you. If something comes up. It’s about going deeper, and it’s about sharing what they’re seeing in the industry, in the marketplace, what you’re seeing in the marketplace. And it’s really about helping each other get better and build a stronger, deeper relationship that will more authentically lead to introductions and referrals down the line.

00:03:37:03 – (Brynne Tillman): And there are many ways that we teach how to do that. Once you’ve got those relationships, the challenge for many is, how do we start these calls? Because, yet I can’t even tell you. 1015 times a month where someone’s like, hey, it looks like we sell to the same people as jump on a call and see if we can refer business to one another. I’m very selective in who I want to refer to, and I’m not going to jump on the call with people that are so eager to refer to me before they even know me. Right. So I think we have. I think this becomes the deeper, better way to network, at least online. Right? Like if you’re meeting people in person, you’re getting a stronger connection with them.

00:04:26:23 – (Brynne Tillman): You’re getting to know them. You’re seeing them interact with other people in the room. You can feel the authenticity, but when you’re on zoom, when you’re jumping on for a 15 minute call, you don’t really know for sure if these are people that you’d feel comfortable referring to. So if you start, we always say slow down the outreach to speed up the outcome with an insights exchange. It changes everything. 

00:04:53:15 – (Bob Woods): Yep.

00:04:54:22 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): yep. And one of the things that I know we’ll get into this without diving too far ahead is if you start the exchange based on content that they’ve commented on or posting, it’s starting the conversation with something very specific. So it’s not a general well, let’s see if we can refer to business. You’re kind of starting to be specific. And when you speak to someone about a specific topic, you can get a really good sense of how important it is to them, how knowledgeable they are about it, and how they talk about it. So it gives you a sense of the person as well. 

00:05:34:15 – (Bob Woods): And but oh, as you can say, and build on just what Stan said just really, really quickly because it starts with a thought of theirs. You’re already going to be more important to them. Because you are, you’re probably going to be agreeing with that thought, but because you’re actually starting with something that they said rather than a pitch. I think that just lends even more authenticity and value to what you want to do as well. 

00:05:57:03 – (Brynne Tillman): That is a 100% spot on for both of you.That’s Sonam and Al, and I love this idea of starting the conversation around what they obviously care about, not what I want to talk about. So perfect. 

00:06:11:15 – (Bob Woods): Yeah, so, Stan now. Stan. Yeah yeah yeah, we have a lot of stuff to cover today. So. So, Stan, do you want to talk a little bit more about what insight, engagement really is?

00:06:22:12 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): It’s, it’s funny, in essence, the at least the way I view it is picking a very specific comment that someone’s made about a topic and reaching out and saying, hey, I noticed that you commented on this topic, and I’d love to talk in a little bit more detail about how you see it. And I will also bring my perspective to the discussion. You can do it on zoom. You can do it on a phone call. The main thing is to exchange thoughts, 

00:06:58:15 – (Bob Woods): right? Yeah. So what I like about this whole thing is that you’re not trying to get the meeting. Everyone in sales is obsessed about getting to the meeting. This. I mean, you know, obviously you’re trying to meet with someone, but it’s not about getting the meeting.

00:07:11:06 – (Bob Woods): You’re actually earning the meeting by showing up as someone who is worth listening to, who is worth exchanging insights for. That’s why we call them insight exchanges, because you’re inviting your prospects into meaningful peer to peer conversations around topics they care about. Because remember, you’re starting this whole thing with a nugget that they have shared. So they, you know, they always already care about this and that naturally.

00:07:40:16 – (Bob Woods): But naturally it builds trust and creates a space for future business discussions, which is why I think that it works just from a 30,000ft view. Brynne. 

00:07:51:03 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I agree. And so the next question really is how do we find the right people in the right content? You want to start that and then I’ll well, 

00:08:01:12 – (Bob Woods): Actually, before we get into that, we do have an e-book associated with us. Now this is actually a fairly detailed e-book. So we’re not going to be able to get into everything in this podcast that’s in the e-book. So I am really, really encouraging you to download the e-book. So it’s at social sales links. Com slash linked in insights. That’s all one word linked in insights okay. Inc.com. Yeah two N’s there. That’s how we want you to be a social sales link. Com slash linked inside out. We already have those links in YouTube and in Linked in for our people who are viewing and listening to us live right now, we will have that link as well in show notes for when the podcast version comes out. So again, this is what we’re talking about: 30,000ft view stuff here.

00:08:54:16 – (Bob Woods): There is more detail in here, along with a bunch of crispy prompts that you can use. Crispy, I promise. I should say that you can use it as well to really help you on this journey that we’re going to be talking about today. 

00:09:09:03 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I love that. Can we jump into how we find that? Don’t let’s, 

00:09:12:16 – (Bob Woods): let’s jump headfirst into the deep end.

00:09:16:08 – (Brynne Tillman): All right. So you know, the biggest question is if I go to my home page and I start scrolling, there is so much noise. Just like, where am I ever going to find the right content from the right people at the right time? And there’s lots of different ways to do this. The first way I love is to search for hosts.

00:09:38:03 – (Brynne Tillman): So if you go to your search bar inside of LinkedIn, this is in the free LinkedIn and you hit enter. One of the filters is post and you can click on posts. And then I go to the latest and then I’ll do from my first group connections and people I follow. And then I get a list of my connections, content, and people I follow.

00:10:05:17 – (Brynne Tillman): So maybe I will follow Brené Brown. She’s not my connection, but if she shares content and I’m following her, it will now come up in this stream and I bookmark it. So I have it. I call it daily Content, and I will click in there and see who in my network shared content. And when you do latest, you’re getting the most recent content.

00:10:27:22 – (Brynne Tillman): So I love that once you’re engaging, that is going to spark ideas for conversation. So they share content. You can comment and react and reach out to them with additional insights. I’m sure we’ll talk about where to grab them. And I think that, to me, is one of the most powerful ways to optimize LinkedIn and your time. Right?

00:10:53:03 – (Brynne Tillman): Because you’ll go straight in. And so now I see Stan shared content around, you know, adoption for Sales Navigator. And I engage on that and I reach and say, Stan, I really enjoy your content or your comment on Sales Navigator adoption. I have some ideas that I’ve been throwing around. I’m wondering if you’d be interested in exchanging some thoughts around this topic.

00:11:19:20 – (Brynne Tillman): If you are like me now, I’d be happy to send you a link. Or if you are, please let me know. Your preferred way to schedule right? So now it’s really directly around what mattered to Stan, and it bridges to what matters to me. But it doesn’t start with what matters to me. You aren’t really important. You do not. They switch this call even if they ask you. So tell me what you do. Do it in a very like 1 to 2 sentences. And if they seem interested, you could say, hey, I’d love another call where I can learn more about what you do, and I could share what I do and see if there’s an opportunity for us to refer business or to network further.

00:12:05:08 – (Brynne Tillman): Make it a second call before you pitch in, and if your profile is positioned well, that’s helping you, that’s helping you build that as well. So yeah. Lee said she loves our prompt. So I love Natalie. So I’m just sharing one other thing because how do I know Natalie? Most Saturday mornings we hang out on the Sales Logic podcast at 8 a.m. eastern with Mark Hunter, Meredith Lee Powell, and it’s a Fabulous Life podcast.

00:12:35:19 – (Brynne Tillman): As we’re doing this year. This is another opportunity, right? This is where we can get into conversations with people around events and then move that to, you know, I’d love to talk more about the topic that Meredith and Mark were talking about. You can also search content by influencer. So if there are certain influencers that are attracting your ideal audience now, you could go in and follow just people that are engaging with Mark Hunter’s content or Meredith’s content and then go out to listen to notes, find a podcast they’ve been on and start a conversation before you even ask for insights.Provide more insights from the influencer that they’ve been engaging with. Okay, enough with me. I’m passing the baton. Grabbing it. 

00:13:28:16 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Great. Yeah, that was awesome. And one of the things about the free version of LinkedIn is most people probably don’t use that post filter, because who talks about it, but it’s so valuable to help you stay focused on posts. Now, one of the things here’s one thing to do. Here’s one thing not to do. You can use the main search bar to drop a keyword in. We’ll pull up the posts about a specific topic and then, as Brynne mentioned, you can search for first degree connections and so forth. So you could scale it up.

00:14:04:09 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): Yeah that’s what I used to do, which is scrolling through my news feed to try to find content that I want to get into within my body and vigorous maquinas, which means, yes, don’t do that. So take advantage of that post filter. It’s out. 

00:14:23:16 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. On LinkedIn you really need to take control of your LinkedIn news feed as much as possible. And the best way to do that is to avoid it and do the searches instead, rather than depending on the news feed, because you’re not only going to get a lot of stuff that you don’t care about, you’re also going to get ads that you probably don’t care about. So with that, I want to take things back just a little bit to go through the steps, because we kind of talked about all the steps at once.

00:14:51:24 – (Bob Woods): These are all in the e-book, by the way. Social sales link e-commerce linked in insights. That’s all one word, by the way, if I haven’t said that already. So the first step, which we’ve gone over pretty much here, is identify the right prospects by looking for those LinkedIn users who post content as they are more likely to want to engage with you, as well as roles aligned with your ideal client, influencer, or partner profile.

00:15:17:20 – (Bob Woods): So step two is that insight exchange invite? Erin had a good one, and basically the one that we have in our e-book, essentially follows that format. So I’m not going to read it out loud again. Just bore you all. But what Brynn said and what is in the e-book is what you exactly want to do. There. Number three, something that we really haven’t gone over is offering thought starter plans.

00:15:44:14 – (Bob Woods): Now, I’m not talking about AI prompts here. These are conversation optional prompts. So these could be. Here are just a couple of examples. What do you believe is the biggest barrier to building trust? Early in a prospecting conversation? This is obviously coming from someone who is in sales training. You would come up with your own. Number two. In your experience, what small action creates the biggest trust breakthrough?

00:16:08:23 – (Bob Woods): Number three, how do you think social selling either helps or hurts trust if not done well? Now obviously these examples are more what we would use in the e-book. There is a prompt to help you surface those thoughts starter prompts for whomever that you’re talking to, and especially if you’re talking to more than one person in person in more than one industry, I should say that is going to be very helpful to you, because obviously you’re going to be asking different questions of different people or different prompts from different people.

00:16:42:02 – (Bob Woods): Number four, Brian basically nailed this one. Manage the Insight exchange. Obviously, the most important one is not pitch. Even if they ask what you do. If you start pitching during this call at any time, they’re going to feel like it was a bait and switch. Even if they ask for it. So always offer to just have that second call, because this call has a definite purpose.And that’s for the insight exchange. And then number five is just following up with value. You’re just going to offer to follow up. You may end up writing a blog post or something like that from it. If you do, you might want to mention that. Just say something you know during that conversation like, you know, hey, I may use this stuff in a blog post.

00:17:28:18 – (Bob Woods): Is it okay if I quote you and then attribute you? Sometimes they’ll say, yeah, sure, go ahead. Sometimes they’ll say, well, don’t attribute me, but you can go ahead and quote me, whatever that is, that’s fine. And then number six, if you do go the blog post route, or if you do the post route or Substack or whatever you’re you’re going to end up doing there, just make sure that you get them blank and say you know, hey, here it is, and invite them to continue the dialog if they wish.

00:17:56:07 – (Bob Woods): And then if they don’t respond, just kind of reach out to them really quick and just say, you know, hey, here it is. Either way, I’m glad we got a chance to exchange perspectives and like that type of thing essentially. 

00:18:07:19 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. And you know, often these folks are referral partners, not necessarily prospects. That’s if they are a prospect and you’ve identified something in that conversation, you can go back after that is published or whatever, or, you know, after just say, hey, Bob, I really appreciate our conversation. I get so much value from your insights. I hope you learned something or that you got value from me. I hope you don’t mind. When we were chatting, I heard you say x, y and Z. And you know, I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, and I’ve got some ideas for you. Are you open to a second?

00:18:48:16 – (Brynne Tillman): So you don’t need to stay passive, but you need motion to move it. If in fact you really have some ideas and thoughts for them that can lead to your solution. Know and only do it if it’s authentic. Only do it if you really heard something there where you can bring some value. But the other thing is, I can’t tell you how many of these conversations turn into me introducing them to someone else I heard right?

00:19:19:17 – (Brynne Tillman): So I heard they had a different need. I introduced them to someone else that can help them. A website builder or, you know, whatever that might be. They heard what their priorities are. And sometimes that turns into business for other folks in our network. Yep. That’s really networking. 

00:19:39:07 – (Bob Woods): Yes, that’s what this is all about. When you come right down to it, it’s networking. And why not use the number one platform where people build relationships and have the tools to build those relationships. And that’s LinkedIn to get this whole process started, 

00:19:57:17 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m going to throw in one more quick thing. And then I think I’ve exhausted my thoughts around this. But the other thing you can do is if you happen to see someone who’s engaging in there, a second to group connection, and you engage, you can also reach out to your shared connections and say, hey, I’ve been engaging with Stan on LinkedIn.

00:20:21:08 – (Brynne Tillman): He’s got some great insights. I’m going to be reaching out to him to ask him for an insights exchange call, where I can learn more about this topic and his perspective. How well do you know him? Can I drop your name if I was, yeah, sure. So I reached out. Stan, I really have enjoyed the content that you’ve shared or the comments that you’ve made.

00:20:43:04 – (Brynne Tillman): I was chatting with Bob on LinkedIn. Your name came up, he said hello, right? And now it’s not only have I created some credibility because I’ve engaged in the content, but now I’m bringing in a shared connection as well. It is definitely more steps and it takes longer. But at the end of this we need to say it again, I know I said at the top of the hour or a half hour or whenever it was, we need to slow down the outreach to speed up the.

00:21:14:20 – (Bob Woods): Yeah. So, Stan, are you exhausted with ideas? Is or to chime in on something else, 

00:21:21:09 – (Stan Robinson Jr.): the last one that I’ll mention is one thing that Brynne mentioned several times when she was talking about conversations, and that is key, as she said, I heard this, I heard that, I heard this, and that implies that she was listening. So the goal with these conversations is, is yes, to get your perspective. But make sure you listen for opportunities to extend the conversation or help them in some way, or put them in contact with someone, because that’s where you really get the most value from these conversations. Why? 

00:21:59:20 – (Bob Woods): Absolutely agree with that. So I just want to wrap up just by going back to what Brynne has said several times.But it is this is so true, guys inside exchanges slow down the sales process just enough to speed up trust, which actually gives you kind of more, more momentum. That’s the word I’m looking for momentum as you’re going through things. So it’s actually about building momentum even though you’re not necessarily starting out of the blocks with that absolute kind of speed.

00:22:28:00 – (Bob Woods): Because if you do that, your momentum is probably going to end up going down more. If you start off the blocks just a little bit slow it just slower pace. And yeah, I like that you can speed up that trust when you make people matter first, everything else is going to flow naturally. So pick five connections. Send your first insight exchange, invite, invite or invite depending on what you want to do, how brave you are, and then open the door to conversations that can actually either convert directly into sales or strengthen or start a networking relationship.

00:23:05:09 – (Bob Woods): If that’s the if that’s where things are going within that conversation, and then no matter what it is, you’re building relationships that actually will last. And again, what I said before, there is so much we’ve actually addressed things that aren’t in the book here on this episode, as well as there are things in the book that we haven’t addressed here.

00:23:26:05 – (Bob Woods): So we normally don’t really push things, but we’re kind of pushing things a little bit more here, just because we think it’s so important for you to get this into your hands or onto your screen or however you want to put it. Social sales link.com/linked in insights. That’s where we’re going to leave things. Thanks guys. Another great conversation today.

00:23:47:11 – (Brynne Tillman): Yay. All right guys thanks so much. 

00:23:50:05 – (Bob Woods): Yeah thanks. So whether you’ve been with us live or recorded by our podcast. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Making Sales Social Live. We are here practically every week, so join us if you’re listening to us on our podcast. Go ahead and subscribe. If you haven’t done that already and drop us a like and or a comment as well.

00:24:09:23 – (Bob Woods): We also interview leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business and many more areas. That’s the other part of our podcast here. So catch those episodes as well. And when you are out and about this week and every week, and especially if you’re doing this kind of thing that we’ve just been talking about, make sure that your sales are so.So thanks everyone. Have a great day, great week, all that stuff. 

Outro:

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