Episode 434: The Real Reason Your Sales Team Isn’t Getting Conversations from LinkedIn

Bob Woods  00:22

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!

Brynne Tillman:  00:46

Hello, hello, and welcome back to Making Sales Social LIVE! Stan and I are on our own today, trying to figure this out without Bob.

Stan Robinson Jr.  00:57

How are you? I’m excellent. Brynne, yes, we miss Bob, but we will have a great time.

Brynne Tillman  01:07

Yeah, and I love this topic that we’re talking about today, which I’m really excited about, ultimately. Ultimately, it’s why sales teams and sales professionals are not getting conversations from LinkedIn. Talk to me a little bit about why, first of all, conversations are really important, and that should be our goal, not actually sales.

Stan Robinson Jr.  01:34

Yes, because we always talk about building a relationship first and slowing down your outreach to speed up your outcome. So it is a slightly longer game, but it’s more effective, and you actually build real relationships instead of the Connect and pitch that we hear about so much.

Brynne Tillman:  02:00

I love that. I love that. And you know, the goal of LinkedIn, if you’re in a business development role, should not be to make a sale, right? It’s to start trust-based conversations. It’s to open up the dialog. So it’s really important that we’re doing that, but we can talk to hundreds, if not 1000s of people, and it’s usually almost dozens a month, probably that will say to us, Look, I’m on LinkedIn. I’ve been doing it for years. I’ve been, you know, I post, I’ve got, I may even pay a marketing company to post, but it’s not converting. I’m not getting the conversation. So let’s dive in and talk about why this is really happening. And you know, the first one is these random acts of posting. What are your thoughts that concept?

Stan Robinson  03:01

Yeah, that’s a lot of us salespeople posting with no strategy behind it. So if their marketing department puts out a new piece about a new product that their company has just announced, they think that, okay, well, let me post about that, and that, one of the keys is to focus on posting content that is of interest to your target audience and helps them.

Brynne Tillman:  03:31

Yeah, I saw that absolutely spot on with that. So let’s talk about how we find out, or what? What is it that our buyers care about? They don’t really care about our products and services, right? What do they care about? Where would you start? What would you think, do they care like? What are your thoughts? Then I’ll share mine.

Stan Robinson Jr.  03:57

So they care about solving a particular problem that’s top of mind for them. And you know, depending on your audience, you should have a pretty good idea of what the top three most common problems are that are top of mind for your ideal customer profile. If it’s someone responsible for revenue, then it’s pipeline, quota, quality conversations, quality prospects, etc. If they’re in another area, like finance, it could be risk management, but the point is that you have to have a good idea of what the problems are that your target audience is most focused on selling. What are they being measured on, solving rather than selling? So what are they measured on?

Brynne Tillman:  04:51

Yeah, no, I love that. So when we can get in, and when it comes to posting or content, social, and selling. The content we talk all the time has to have these five elements, which are: it’s got to resonate with them, so they have to know that this is for them. It’s got to create curiosity enough for them to see more, to read it, right? So it’s going to teach them something new that they didn’t think about before, and now that we’ve taught it to them, we want them to start thinking about how that would work inside of their organization, whatever that change is, and then ultimately create a compelling moment. Right? The Compelling moment means we get them to like to comment on the engagement when I do this all the time. Stan, I want to say Lurker to engagement gauger.

Stan Robinson Jr.  05:42

Yep, people understand lurker. Sometimes we say spectator, but yep,

Brynne Tillman  05:46

There is a word I just have to remember a little spectator right now. So, spectator to engager, we want to move them because we can’t start a conversation with them until we know they’re there. So when we post, we’ve got to get as much engagement as we possibly can from the right people, so, you know, and we’ve got to do it on a consistent basis, and that’s where the random acts of posting really become purposeful. And by the way, this doesn’t have to be an entire novel. It could be a quick little post, it could be a blog post. It could be a quote that gets people thinking differently about lots of things. The second one, I think, may be just as important, or even maybe slightly more than the first one, which is that they’re not getting conversations because they don’t have an engagement strategy. Jump into that one. My friend, yes.

Stan Robinson Jr.  06:46

So LinkedIn offers different ways to engage. There’s a little like or react button, and then you have the option to comment, and we tend to take the path of least resistance, which is just clicking like, but that doesn’t do anything for you, or really, the person posting. So what we suggest is to comment and add something to the discussion. You can tag the person who wrote the original post. But when you comment with insight that helps move the discussion along, that raises, say, a new question related to what they were talking about. It amplifies the post so they get more visibility. So the poster is happy, it helps them, and it raises your level of visibility with the person who posted in a very light touch way, because you’re helping them, and they’ll notice when you add something insightful, not promotional, to the discussion.

Brynne Tillman:  07:51

You said something magic in there. I don’t want to get lost, which is to ask a question, right? If you say Stan, I really enjoyed your insights on X, Y, and Z. What do you think about a, b, and c? Now you’re really starting. Don’t just ask the question; first, talk about what resonated with you, and then that will start to move toward a conversation, for sure. Absolutely, I do want to share a bonus on this, you know, we’re talking about no strategy. So here’s the challenge around an engagement strategy: let’s say I think my strategy is, I am going to jump into my homepage newsfeed, and I’m going to engage with 10 people, and it takes you 20 minutes to find the right people. 

So if you have Sales Navigator, first of all, it’s very simple to do, because you can save the people you want to engage with, and then search by who’s shared content. But if you have the free LinkedIn, here’s a little tip, pro tip, go to your search bar and hit enter, and click on posts, click on latest, go into the industries, or, let’s say, go into your relationships. First send people you follow, and then go into the industry of the author, so the industries you serve, right? And now we’ve got a feed of posts, but based on the most recent post, because we chose the latest from only the people that we are connected to or we follow. So make sure you’re following all your prospects, even if you’re not connected to them, and then the ones in that industry. Now bookmark that, just like in your Chrome, not in LinkedIn, and every day you can go into that post and say, Now I’m going to comment and engage 10 times, and now you’ve got a real strategy.

Stan Robinson Jr.  09:58

Yes, that’s safe. So much. Time, because people are looking for opportunities to engage, but they feel like they always have to go back and redo the search for people. And we all want to avoid getting lost in our news feeds, because some people will simply scroll through their news feed to try to find appropriate content, which wastes a tremendous amount of time.

Brynne Tillman:  10:24

We’ve got a ton of people on right now. Welcome. Feel free to drop in comments. We’ve got some folks on YouTube. We’ve got some folks on LinkedIn. Feel free to jump in the comments and share with us, either what is the number one thing you do to get conversations, or what is the number one thing you’d like us to answer to help you get more conversations? Love to hear from you guys, for sure. All right, let’s go into the next one while we’re waiting for all the millions of comments.

Stan Robinson Jr.  11:02

Super!

Brynne Tillman  11:03

Okay, so the next one is connect and ignore. Talk about that. It’s worse than Connect. No, it’s not worse than connect and pitch. Nothing’s worse than connect and pitch. But second to that might be connect and ignore. Talk to me about that and why that is a challenge for starting conversations.

Stan Robinson Jr.  11:25

Yes, unfortunately, that’s all too easy to do. Everyone’s busy. We’re putting together lists of people that we want to follow up with, and we reach out, send an invitation, and unless you have blocked time and made this part of your day, and we’ll get to that little bit later, it’s easy to have people actually accept your invitations to connect, but then you forget to send them a quick welcome message saying, Hey, thanks for connecting. Great to be connected with you. I look forward to following your content or whatever your welcome message is. So that is a lost opportunity.

Brynne Tillman:  12:03

Absolutely, absolutely. So I’m going to share two quick things on this. Number one, if you go into LinkedIn and my network, you can click through and get a list of all your connections in order, and who connected last. So that’s something that you might want to do. And every day, you can look at that, and you can see your most recent connections. It’s both who you asked to connect with, and they said yes, and if you said yes. So it’s, it’s a great like, let’s go through this and see who we’ve been ignoring. That’s a great way to to optimize this. The other thing with the the Connect and ignore, that I think is really important to think about, is, what, why did you connect in the first place? What was the purpose and what value can you bring to that person? 

So for example, did you connect because you liked their content? Did you connect because you wanted to invite them to an event? Did you connect because they might be someone that’s great at a networking meeting you’re going? Why did you connect with them in the first place? And in my opinion, do not send a connection request until you know what that welcome message is going to be like, that that it’s the, I hate to say, the one two punch. It’s, you know, but it’s that combo, you know. I’ve connected with you. Stan, great to connect with you. I really enjoyed your content on Sales Navigator, I’m looking forward to continue to follow so now what am I going to do? Well, I might go find another piece of content on Sales Navigator, maybe I go out and find a new product release from Sales Navigator, you can use AI or Google or lots of things. And now Stan connects, and thanks Dan for connecting again. Really loved that content recently came across this new product feature. Let me know if you’re interested. I’m happy to send it your way. I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about what matters to Stan. And so that’s where we start those trust based conversations. 

And Stan, I’m going to go back what you said at the top of the hour, which is so important to reiterate, you have to slow down your outreach to speed up that outcome. And this is a perfect example. We want to have real conversations. And our good friend, Mel, hello, hello, thrilled to see you here. So if you guys have questions, if you guys have tell us what you do to start conversations, that’s worked for you. But our next one, and this is huge, I. And I will say this is something we can all do better at, including the social sales link team, which is client searching client connections for referrals and permission to name drop. We have a wonderful community of amazing members, and every month we have a free come as our guest to coaching. You can go find it at social sales, link.com/events Mel is one of our, probably our, probably in the top five ever joined still with us, amazing member who is incredibly supportive. So what if I went to Mel’s connections and I said, Mel, here are 12 people I’d love for you to invite to the next event. We’re not doing enough of that. You’re probably not doing enough of that. This is where we can completely transform our pipeline or or funnel, whatever you call it, right, based on the people that already love us and who they know. So talk to me a little bit about that.

Stan Robinson Jr.  16:08

Stan, yeah, your clients are people that you’ve worked with you’ve built a trusted relationship with already, and they’re usually willing to help you. They did be delighted to help you if you make their lives easy. And so when you do the searches and you do do the footwork to identify who they’re connected to that is of interest to you, then it’s very easy to go to them and say these five people, and I noticed you’re connected with them. Are you comfortable enough to give me an Brynne TIllman:duction? Or can I name, drop your name when I reach out to them? So as you said, Brynne, it’s a tremendously underutilized way of developing new relationships.

Brynne Tillman  17:05

I could not agree with you more. I think that, and that the key that you said, that I just want to reiterate, is you’ve got to make it easy for them, and when you make it easy for them, you could do it at scale. So Mel, honored to be one of your five plus years members. Yeah, I think Mel really was in the first cohort of people to ever join when we launched. And man, do we appreciate you so much and the value you bring to the group. All right, our next one, no outreach framework, meaning random acts of outreach. We talked about, you know, random acts of content, right? Or posting, really, no outreach framework. So talk to me about workflow and what that means when it comes especially, I mean, you really understand this through in many places, but through Sales Navigator, talk about workflow and why a cadence or campaign or workflow is critical for starting conversations.

Stan Robinson Jr.  18:18

Yes, and one of the things, and I should mention this so I so I do not forget. Oh, thank you, Natalie. I was going to mention that there is an e book that goes along with what we’ve been talking about, and I will drop it at the bottom of this and let you know what it is for those who are listening as well. So let me see if we can do that. So if you go to social sales, link.com/linkedin, conversations, social sales, link.com/linkedin, conversations, you can get the ebook there. But workflows, one of the things Brynne that you mentioned earlier when when we were talking about welcome messages at the very basic you know what message you want to send before you even send out the invitation. That’s an example of strategic thinking rather than random acts. And one of the things that that you can do, we talk about Sales Navigator, for those that have it, is you can use lists to organize your outreach. Who you want to reach out to. You can take advantage of alerts like job changes, which is a lot of times, a huge opportunity to reach out to someone at an opportune time now, not the first month that they’ve changed a job, let them, you know, get their feet wet. But four to six months, three to six months after they’ve started, you know, reach out to them. It’s a good time, because many times they’re tasked with bringing in new solutions. Yes, and they want to make a name for themselves, and you may be able to help them so sales, navigators, organizational features, their alerts can help you build a logical sequence of messaging and help us all, myself included, stay organized. In terms of outreach,

Brynne Tillman:  20:21

I absolutely love that. I can’t say how much I love the job, change the post on LinkedIn. All of those things are really great opportunities. Prospect by polls is another right to be able to go out and do that. Here’s the thing, and you also, I love your insights that get my wheels turning. So one of the things you said is, you know, they’ve just got this job. They’re not. They’re getting hundreds of congratulations. Whatever you pitch to them today is going to go on deaf ears. But what if you had great content? What other CFOs wish they knew in the first 90 days of their of their new job, and now you’re bringing value to them, and then in the 90 days, as as Stan mentioned, you reach out and say, Hey, I hope you got value from that. You had a great first 90 days. I’d love to hear what you wish you knew, right? And so now we’re starting conversations around that. So Stan, that just triggered such a strategy that’s so important when we’ve got those so guys, you’ve got to create that workflow. So Natalie, my friend, my talks, to often, invite someone when I’m at an event to create a connection. So I cannot tell you how much I love this. What I would say two quick little tips. Number one, and I know Natalie probably knows this, but you actually have a QR code in your LinkedIn app that can take someone scans it. They go right to your profile, and they can send you a message. And then when they do and I send you a connection request, and I would watch them do it, let them do that, they scan your profile, they send you the connection request. Have a welcome message ready? Great meeting you at ABC event. I’m looking forward to continuing our conversation. Paste or use short code and you’re done. So I love this. So we have it looks like, I think this is Angela, who’s on here, even though it says LinkedIn user, I because I see somewhere else, I can see her name. Oh, the URL. If you could Stan, put that up the URL for this. Yes, there you go. Yep.

Stan Robinson Jr.  22:50

So it sounds like you’re watching, which is great. But for those listening, you can go to socialsaleslink.com/linkedinconversations.

Brynne Tillman  23:02

Oh, I am so loving this. Okay, so we went through a lot of behavioral things that we can update, right? We went through what we can do to ultimately engage, whether and start conversations, whether it’s through purposeful posting, purposeful engaging, getting introductions that always start great conversations, leveraging the people that already know, like ,and trust us to start conversations with their network. Any last thoughts that you want to add to this, Stan, before we bring this in for our landing?

Stan Robinson Jr.  23:44

Yes, when reaching out to say, clients and others for introductions, one thing not to forget, because I know I’m guilty of this, is to make sure you offer to make introductions for them. Say, feel free to have a look at my LinkedIn network. If there’s anyone that I can introduce you to, please let me know, so that it is reciprocal.

Brynne Tillman:  24:06

Oh, I love that. And I’ll throw out one more leverage LinkedIn events, you can invite up to 1000 people a week, pretty simply, and it’s a great way for them to experience you. Some of you may be here from that, by the way, if you’re here live so Stan, thank you so much. Bob always has a wonderful exit thing in saying thanks for joining, and even the thanks for I missed all of that. Guys. If you want to know anything about us, go ask Bob woods, because but that you can actually subscribe to this podcast, making sales social on any of your favorite podcast places you know, Bob is really valuable for this show.

Stan Robinson Jr.  24:56

Yes, indeed, his Intros and outros. Are amazing.

Brynne Tillman 25:01

But here’s what I do. Know how to say, Guys, when you’re out and about, don’t forget to make your sales social. Bye. Guys.

Outro:

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