Episode 430: Leverage LinkedIn to Drive Customer Loyalty and Repeat Business

Bob Woods  00:22

Thanks for joining us. Everyone for Making Sales Social LIVE! Coming to you from the Social Sales Link virtual studios and brought to you by askSSL.ai, I’m Bob Woods. Stan Robinson is out today, but Brynne Tillman is here. How are you doing? Brynne, I’m great. Bob. How are you? I am doing well and very excited to talk about what we’re going to be talking about today.

 Brynne Tillman  01:14

That makes two of us. 

Bob Woods  01:17

let’s get this show on the road, as they say. So if you’re a sales management type, like a CFO, a VP, Director of Sales, even a sales manager, you know, like that type of thing, and you have LinkedIn Sales Navigator within your organization, you know that your sales team should be using it. Emphasis is on the word should there, because they may not be or they’re just, you know, not. That’s why we’re going to be laser-focused on Sales Navigator today and helping those sales leaders increase adoption of this highly valuable tool. And it is a very valuable tool, right?

Brynne Tillman  02:00

Brynne, yes, Bob, it is. And I am excited to talk about the adoption side of things, because we’re out talking with these sales teams, and their idea of adoption is, hey, I’m logging in, or my folks are logging in, and they’re in it every day. That, to them, is adoption. And we need to really talk about what real adoption is. So I played to have this conversation with you. 

Bob Woods  02:24

Yeah, I am too. There’s adoption and then there’s use, and there’s there. Those are two entirely different things. So with this episode, we’re giving away our actual sales leaders ‘ ultimate guide to Sales Navigator adoption. It’s at Social Sales Link.com/sales, navigator. You see the address at the bottom of your screen, at the upper left of the screen. If you scan that QR code, it will also take you directly to the place where you can download it. So the guide itself goes way beyond our discussion today. It has things like setting up Sales Navigator, personas, and saving searches. And you know, other topics that between you and me are just death to talk about on a podcast. But, you know, I strongly, strongly suggest, in all seriousness, that you download and check it out again. It’s at socialsaleslink.com/salesnavigator. We made that easy for you as well. 

So today we’re going to do things slightly differently. We’re going to Q&A with different topics involving sales now. So with that, let’s get right into the first topic about something that Brynne has already alluded to. Because, as she said, you know, many sales leaders think that Sales Navigator adoption just means turning on the licenses and, you know, handing them out. Ali, Ali Austin, free, you know, and just whatever happens, happens. Brynne, what’s the first major shift a sales leader really needs to make to ensure real adoption?

 Brynne Tillman  03:58

Oh, I love the first major shift. I have, like, 400, but I think, yeah, the first one is okay. I think the first major thing we have to look at is KPIs. So are we measuring the right activity? Because here’s the thing, the activity that we might be measuring, or did our sales reps log in? Are they on it? How many searches have they saved? How many leads have they saved? But are those the activities that are actually getting the trust-based conversations that typically is the goal of Sales Navigator, so just really clearly, the goal of Sales Navigator is not to sell. It’s to open the door. It’s to engage with the right people and start those trust-based conversations. So if we are not in. We don’t have the right KPIs in place, so we’re managing activities that may not actually ever get to our goal, which are the conversations. So I would say that I have a lot, a huge list, but I would say the KPIs are the first thing, because the KPIs are ultimately what our reps will work toward.

 Bob Woods  05:26

Yep, and I think a big part of that, just me personally, is that a lot of sales leaders don’t really recognize how important the KPIs that they should be measuring are, because they don’t. They don’t know Sales Navigator themselves.

 Brynne Tillman  05:45

Well, that’s true. So yeah, talk a little bit about how it’s important for those leaders to actually do the work, you could

 Bob Woods  05:52

Yeah. I mean, because it comes to Sales Navigator and especially leadership’s role, they really should know not only what is being measured, but also how to use it in general, so that they know the importance of what is being measured. And the other big topic for that with me is if the sales force sees the sales leaders using it and using it effectively, using it how it should be, they will then know how important it is for them to use it, and, you know, they may pick up tips from the sales leadership that’s like, Oh, I didn’t even know I can do that, and my boss knows how to do that. Maybe I should learn how to do that. 

 Brynne Tillman  06:33

I love that, and I’m gonna kind of yes and that. There are a lot of our clients where they don’t actually give full licenses to the sales leaders, yeah, giving them admin, you know, the ability to pull reports, but they’re not giving them the full access. And I do agree with you, Bob, that the sales leaders need to have their own license. They need to be working in Sales Navigator. And one of the amazing features of Sales Navigator is the ability to share lists like Bob, Stan, and me. If we’re working on a campaign, we’ll have a list that we have shared with each other, and so we can see the activity. So your reps should be sharing their lists with you as the sales manager, and you can coach on a lot of that content. So I not only agree with you, Bob, but realize that that is one of the big gaps that we’re seeing out there, which is that the sales leaders don’t even have their own

 Bob Woods  07:51

Absolutely, absolutely, and just like so many other things at companies, it really is a top-down type of thing. I mean, no matter what you’re doing, it should be top down. And Sales Navigator is definitely one of those things, because if you’re not using it as a sales leader, you know, like I said before  you don’t understand what’s going on. B, you’re not setting a good example.

 Brynne Tillman  08:12

Cool, all right, what’s next? Cool, my friend,

 Bob Woods  08:15

So next comes sales tools and the sales stack, and sales reps hear sales stack, and they’re like, oh my god, what else are we going to have in here? So I mean, you know, when reps say they already have their own processes and they’re resisting these new tools, what can and should leaders do to overcome that resistance, to drive adoption, because we both know that whenever new tools are introduced, everybody’s just rolling their eyes and just get out of this.

 Brynne Tillman  08:50

So I love that question. And when you know we have kind of the eight stages of rolling out a social selling program, and one of them really is taking inventory of the tool stack. What I will say is that the most important thing you can do is naturally integrated into their day, a mistake I see a lot of sales leaders make. First of all, say, Okay, you’re going to carve out an hour a day to work in Sales Navigator. That does not work, right? It needs to be part of their calling routine, their email routine, their CRM routine, right? So it needs to be completely integrated. If you guys have SalesLoft or Gong, part of the cadence is the LinkedIn activity. So here I’ll just stay, say for the record, in 1992 when I was working at Dun and Bradstreet, they rolled out email. It was actually called CC mail, like internal, and I sat in Mary Ann’s office with my boss, and I said to her, How do you expect? Expect me to work this into my day. I am so busy selling. You want me to do this email thing now? Imagine our life without email right now. You can’t. It just doesn’t happen. That’s how LinkedIn and Sales Navigator kind of need to be part of that routine. It needs to be part of the ultimate, you know, like part of the daily process where you’re going to call a client, that company page is up. You’re looking at account IQ and sales IQ. You’ve got some free call planning going, like you should never get on a call without having done that, but that automatically will get us into a routine where that just becomes as natural to us as email.

 Bob Woods  10:52

Yeah, could not agree more with that. So I mean, it’s another tool, but it’s a vital tool. I always talk about the sales tool belt, or I used to, it’s been a while since I brought this up the sales tool belt and how there are, like, all kinds of potential tools on there, but there are some really basic ones that every sales tool belt should have, just like a hammer in in a carpenter toolbelt or something like that. Now, don’t

 Brynne Tillman  11:18

List a few that I think are critical. Yeah, no, please do so, LinkedIn, obviously, we believe Sales Navigator, but at least LinkedIn, email your CRM and a calendar link. This is something a lot of companies still don’t have, but I would say the biggest conversion tool that I have, other than LinkedIn, is my calendar link. Everyone, every salesperson, needs to have that. So I just kind of wanted to throw that.t

 Bob Woods  11:46

out, yeah, no, that’s great. No, that’s great. So with that, let’s move on to the mindset. Mindset is something that we talk about here at Social Sales Link for just a bunch of different things. And you know, being in the social selling mindset, stop talking about how you help people and just help people, and all of these other phrases that if you’re a regular listener of ours, hopefully they are nailed into your brain just as much as they’re nailed into ours. So, um, LinkedIn brought out this deep sales mindset, which I think is really, really interesting. What role does that mindset play in making Sales Navigator successful within a sales org, so deep?

 Brynne Tillman  12:29

Sales was actually built around a study, which is really cool, but I would say the highest level. And there’s an e-book somewhere out there. If you do Sales Navigator, deep sales, it’s worth checking out. It’s probably a year old now, maybe a little longer. But deep sales is about research before outreach. It’s about understanding the client and the prospect. It’s about leveraging data to start trust-based conversations. It’s not a smile and dial. It’s the opposite of smile and dial, right? It’s about slowing down your outreach to speed up your outcome. The Deep sales side is really about being very selective. It’s not a numbers game; it’s a value insight relationship game. And so the mindset is not how many new connections can I make in a week, it’s really how many conversations can I have with the right people in a week around content that matters to them?

 Bob Woods  13:47

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, that’s actually going to steer us right back into KPIs. So you know, you mentioned conversations as a potential track, rather than, you know, counting searches, saving leads in mail sent, and things like that. What are, and if you listed the specifics before, I apologize, it is probably good to bring them up again, just in case. But what KPIs should be tracked in the Sales Navigator, in a deep sale kind of way, and thinking and mindset,

 Brynne Tillman  14:20

Yeah, and a lot of this is making sure that your CRM is connected and that the right sources are being tracked. But for me, and I will say, we, you know, when we work with a client, we’ll customize their KPIs and their Sales Navigator and what that’s going to look like in their CRM. But at a top level, the simplest one to track is how many new first-degree connections meet your ICP. So I do a search day. I have 71. We have a one-on-one. Next week, I will look at that search. I have 75 A. I know I have four new ones now. I don’t want huge volume, but I want to look at what we are connecting. If I have 150, that’s a red flag. That is not a good KPI. The KPI is not how many; the KPI is that we are growing at the right pace, that we can have conversations, that’s the right KPI. So, this is not like who has the most wins, it’s who has so that’s the second KPI is how many of those new first-degree connections turned into a conversation, that’s an important KPI. Another one we can look at is how many introductions or permission to name-drop opportunities did we have this week? So, for example, I see Bob knows 10 or 15 people that I want to meet. I reach out to him. He makes one or two introductions, and I start conversations with five or six more of those folks. Those are KPIs that matter because I came in from a trusted source. I’m coming in with credibility. There are a few others that we could talk about, but it really depends on the goals of the company, because one of them, let’s say one of the goals, is we want to start conversations with people in new jobs so we can then, you know, how many people that meet your ICP have a new job that you have now done this next Step with, right? So there are so many that we can do. The goal is that the KPIs that we put in place directly translate into the activity that creates the conversation.

 Bob Woods  16:54

Yeah. Speaking of activity, we all know that Sales Navigator has a lot of features. I always used to call it LinkedIn on steroids. It’s even, I don’t know what it’s like, even above steroids at this point, but that Sales Navigator basically can, how can sales leaders actually simplify the tool so that their people are actually using the parts that matter the most, because not every single feature in Sales Navigator is going to be used by every single person.

 Brynne Tillman  17:26

Yeah, and we just did this for a client. We customized a playbook for them, right? So what does that look like? We have to look at it again. What is the goal? So where do we start? What do you know? What are we trying to achieve? What’s the challenge we’re trying to solve, what’s the content we have, what’s the, you know, the ICP, and what is the campaign? So there are hundreds, well, dozens of campaigns, right? And we want to customize those for the ultimate goal that we’re looking to achieve. So, for example, if we were going to do a prospect by poll, our KPI might be how many people we invite to wait? What was the question? Am I answering the right question?

 Bob Woods  18:12

Yeah, you are narrowing down all of the tools into the ones that salespeople will use the most.

 Brynne Tillman  18:19

So it’s, it’s not the tool as much as

 Bob Woods  18:22

the features. I mean, features. I mean, yeah, so

Brynne Tillman  18:26

If it’s a prospect by poll, right? First of all, do I have the playbook with the step-by-step, the screenshots, and the things so I can set up a poll easily? Do I have the AI prompt so that my poll is aligned with the company voice? Do I have the step-by-step to invite people to vote on the poll? Then, how do we convert them from voted to either, you know, offering an additional piece of content or asking for an interview, or whatever our goal is, right? So we’ve got to get that playbook. So what salespeople need, they can do all the training in the world, and we’re trainers, so we know that, so we could do all the training in the world, and five to 10% of it will get implemented. But when they have a playbook, when they have this step-by-step guide, and when it’s custom to them. I mean, a lot of our clients, because of budget, end up with a generic playbook, which is fine; it does a good job, but we just customized an incredible playbook for a client, and the adoption will be so huge because it’s a no-brainer. It’s so simple, and it aligns with their daily process. It’s not set aside 30 minutes three times a day. It’s in. Graded into their daily work.

 Bob Woods  20:03

I think that’s a that that’s a big part of the puzzle, because if they see a new tool, and they see that as extra, and then the work that they have to do behind it is also extra, it ain’t going to be implemented, whereas if it’s into the flow of what they’re already doing, there’s a much, much higher adoption rate. I would guess.

 Brynne Tillman  20:25

I love it. We’ve got lots of people on live. I would love to know in chat, if you guys, and if you’re listening in, on the podcast, you could certainly drop us a note. But I would love to know if you guys have Sales Navigator, because right now, we’ve got 17 people on 18 people live in LinkedIn, and we have one or two that keep changing over at YouTube, but let us know in chat. Yes, so I have sales now, or I don’t have sales now,

Bob Woods  21:00

Very interesting to see, and speaking of things like that, you know, just want to remind you again to download our sales leaders ‘ ultimate guide to Sales Navigator, adoption at Social Sales Link.com/sales Navigator, you can see the information on the screen. And if you are listening via the podcast, we will have that link in the show notes. So next question, and I know that I’ve been a victim of this back when I had, like, actual sales jobs, and everything else, as opposed to the fun that I have nowadays, even after training some reps, and it’s probably more than sunrise some reps, they fall back into old habits. What can sales leaders do to keep engagement and adoption with sales navigators strong over time?

 Brynne Tillman  21:54

So there’s a lot right, so we can, first of all, use the playbook that really helps. Number two, I think it’s really important to consistently have your KPIs, but consistently coach to the right activity, like so, your on ones, there’s a consistency in the conversation you’re having every single week. If one week we talk about, you know, one week we’re talking about, you know, how many new connections did you make, and how many conversations did you have? And then for three weeks we don’t talk about it again, it loses its priority, so having a checklist of your own in your own ones will really help. Gamification can help. Yes, we use, we used to use the SSI score, not great anymore, but gamification could be a really big opportunity to keep engagement going, celebrating wins. You know, celebrating wins. I don’t know if you got any that you’re thinking about,

 Bob Woods  23:14

Yeah, so actually, you just put up the comment that I wanted to zero in on, too. So Bradford’s bill says, Uh, yes, I have Sales Navigator, and really don’t know how to use it. Well, it generates far too much noise on its own. Okay, I’m gonna, I teed that one up for you. Brynne, yeah,

 Brynne Tillman  23:34

Thank you so. So first of all, um, Bradford Mills is an old friend, so let’s have a conversation for sure, but let’s, let’s just talk about what needs to happen. Number one, the filters on Sales Navigator should reduce the noise even with content right we want to make sure that we’re saving the right people and we’re looking at the right content that we want to engage on, but when you learn how to filter your homepage so that it’s just lead shares, that means people you’ve saved and the content that they’ve shared, all of a sudden it’s not noise. It should be 90% actionable if it’s not unsaved. If it’s someone that you didn’t want, don’t want to engage with them, they shouldn’t be a safe lead, right? Then you can do job changes for all your ICP, and so when you can segregate your list based on engagement, job change, whatever it might be. Now we can go to market with a message that’s in the same vein for all of them. So it’s semi-customized. It’s not that you have to absolutely customize every single message. It’s really personalizing, because they’re all in this. Same place. So Sales Navigator should not be it should not be noise. The link linkedin.com is noise. Sales Navigator should help you filter so that you’re only seeing what you want to see. So we also have, let’s see

 Bob Woods  25:27

The next one’s actually the more one there. So I know actually, let’s, let’s, let’s go back to that one, because I think I know what he’s saying. So, so, so say it’s saying, Do we have a retail version, and I believe that is the retail version or Sales Navigator. So there is Sales Navigator core, probably the closest to a retail version that’s out there. Then there’s also advanced and advanced plus. The Advanced and advanced plus are definitely more for sales organizations when it comes to retail.

Brynne Tillman  26:03

Yeah, I’m sorry, advance you can. So this is newer, advanced, and an individual can have advanced now, yes, that’s true. So they can, and I actually recommend it if you’re going to pay, pay a little more, because you get smart links. And I love smart links, so I didn’t mean to contradict you, but I just.

Bob Woods  26:24

want to Yeah, yeah, no, it’s fine. No, that’s a fine, yet important distinction to make. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,

Brynne Tillman  26:31

But yeah, you could finish your thought without me interrupting. Yeah. So Well,

Bob Woods  26:35

Actually, I do want to move on to one more thing, because it’s adjacent but important. Why is SSI not as relevant as it used to be? We could, we could go for days about that, just as so

Brynne Tillman  26:51

At a high level, it’s not measuring the right activity right that drives the right outcome. Next level down, I don’t think it’s accurate. And I think, like for me, it’ll say that, like that, I’m not providing enough insights. So I do, yeah, people provide more insight. So, I just don’t think it’s measuring the right con, the right things, and that drives the right, and I think that LinkedIn is ignoring it. I think there’s no one behind the scenes that are consistently updating it so that it is relevant.

Bob Woods  27:31

Yep. And then one more, the tool is useful; however, it’s expensive, agreed?

Brynne Tillman  27:37

Well, so I’m going to say, though I would pay my Sales Navigator bill before my electric bill, because my Sales Navigator pays my electric bill. Like it, you like it, it needs to be an investment, not an expense. If it’s an expense, you’re not using it to its capacity,

Bob Woods  27:57

Right, but you need to use it to its capacity, because otherwise you will see it as an expense, and, yeah, I think that that’s absolutely crucial there. So with that, let’s go to the book one more time. The moment that I find the caption for it again. Where is it? There it is, Social Sales Link.com/sales, navigator, if you are listening via the podcast, meaning this is recorded, we will have that in the show notes. So, unless there’s anything else, we’re just about at the top of the hour, so I think we’re going to go and take it home. Brynne, what do you think?

Brynne Tillman  28:34

I think we just barely scratched the surface.

Bob Woods  28:37

And we’re going to do. That’s the thing, too, which is why, honestly, the guide will definitely help you a lot more as a springboard off of this conversation. So, I mean, we normally don’t like, you know, urge, urge, urge people to do it. This one’s really going to help you. This one is really going to help you if you are, if you are a sales leader, and you’re in that situation where people aren’t using Sales Navigator, or even if you’re just a salesperson, and, or I shouldn’t say just if you’re a salesperson, you’re like, I wonder what this can do. This guide will definitely help you start thinking about different ways to use Sales Navigator that could benefit you greatly. Awesome.

 Brynne Tillman  29:20

All right, let’s take it in for a landing, my friend.

Bob Woods  29:23

So here we go. We’ve got clearance from the tower, and we are about ready to land. So whether you have been with us live or recorded via our podcast, thanks for joining us for this episode of Making Sales Social live. Join us because we’re here usually every week, unless there’s a holiday involved or something like that. We’re on recording. Yeah, exactly. If you’re listening to us on our podcast, go ahead and hit that subscribe or follow button to access all of our new content. Get our old shows, which are just as important as this one, if I do say so myself, besides these LinkedIn lives, we also in. Interview leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business and many more areas, so be sure to catch those episodes as well. So when you are out and about this week and every week, be sure that you are making your sales

Brynne Tillman  30:14

social.

Bob Woods  30:18

Yeah, you did. That was perfect. Thanks. Everybody. Have a great week. Bye. Bye.

Outro:

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