Episode 65: Your LinkedIn Elevator Pitch

Bob Woods  00:00

Hey everybody, and welcome. Sorry. Welcome to Making Sales Social Live! I’m Bob woods, the LinkedIn Sherpa, and I’m joined as always by the LinkedIn whisperer, Brynne Tillman, how are you doing today?

Brynne Tillman  00:13

I’m doing great! So excited to be here with you.

Bob Woods  00:17

Yeah, this is great, especially because we’re going to be kind of rolling out a different way of thinking about things that are already in the LinkedIn profile. 

(Intro)

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live! As we share LinkedIn, and social selling training, strategies, and tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman and me Bob Woods every week. Making Sales Social Live! 

Bob Woods  00:47

So you probably haven’t heard of the “LinkedIn Elevator Pitch.” That’s because as I alluded to that term didn’t really exist until now because that’s what you get from the LinkedIn whisperer and LinkedIn Sherpa. So for us, the LinkedIn elevator pitch is very important. It’s a combination of three features in your LinkedIn profile. The Your Story feature, Name Pronunciation, and the Headline. You likely already know about the headline already, but you may not be as familiar with your story and name pronunciation. So Brynne, why don’t we kick things off with the first one, “Your Story.”

Brynne Tillman  01:23

So yeah, LinkedIn now has and you may have seen this, a cover story. This is a 30-second video, and I recommend you make it 29 seconds. So we’ll call it a 29-second video that you can upload on mobile only. You can create the video anywhere, you have to download it to your mobile device, and then upload it behind your headshot. So why do I love this? When someone gets to your profile, there’s about a three-second delay and then in your headshot, the video will start playing for about maybe two seconds. When they click through that they get to your 29-second video. This is like if you were in an event, and they’re going around the room and you’re standing up and they say, “30 seconds, tell us about you,” right? That’s your opportunity. This is… We look at LinkedIn all the time as a 24/7 networking event. Everything we do when we teach, how to engage on LinkedIn, how to connect with people on LinkedIn. Everything is from the mentality of this is a 24/7 event, tradeshow, conference, networking event. So the one piece that’s been missing and this is relatively new is the ability to connect with the human being. Now, how do you know if someone has it? If there is a red circle around their headshot, that means they’ve uploaded a video there. And you can watch anyone’s elevator pitch, right? This is there… and we hate the word pitch. So I hated that but it’s really your 30-second commercial. Who you are, how you help them, and why they should either continue reading your profile, maybe there’s a call to action. Maybe it’s inviting them to some content. Whatever it is we want them to leave that 30 seconds they just invested feeling like that was a great use of their time and they feel more connected to you.

Bob Woods  03:36

Yeah, and it’s definitely for me the “connected to you” part that’s really important because the one thing that the LinkedIn profile in my opinion was always lacking was that “connectedness” because, you know, it’s basically just text and some links and things like that, which is all great. We definitely utilize that to its maximum, for its maximum impact, but it was missing the eye-to-eye thing in my opinion and cover story really breaks that down. It really lets people see who you are and know who you are and even know what you sound like, everything so you’re not this unknown quantity If and when they decide that they want to have a sales conversation with you

Brynne Tillman  04:18

It’s a human-to-human connection. I love that!

Bob Woods  04:20

Yeah!

Brynne Tillman  04:22

The second one is audio. (Bob: Yeah) Name pronunciation. This is 10 seconds, also only available to record on mobile, but you can listen to it on desktop mobile anywhere. You know, it’s 10 seconds. I love, first of all, the concept of name pronunciation initially is… I have a name, Bob Woods is pretty darn easy, right? But I get Brian, Briny. How do you pronounce your name and it’s Brynne Tillman. So I learned from a voice expert. I’ll give her a shout-out, Laura Sekolah. Laura Sekolah. So how do you say your name? That’s it people remember it. So every time I hear her name, I think of it in that. So you know, just a piece of advice when you say your name, Brynne Tillman, Bob woods.

Bob Woods  05:14

Yeah, that’s called the rainbow in voiceover. And that’s what you’re supposed to do with like brand names and stuff like that you’re supposed to Rainbow it.

Brynne Tillman  05:21

Ahh… That’s a thing.

Bob Woods  05:23

That is the thing.

Brynne Tillman  05:24

That is a thing. So when you record name pronunciation, that takes you a second and a half. So now we have nine and a half seconds to really long to two seconds, right, really long name. So now we have this eight seconds, this magic eight seconds. And so I actually will add in mine, I think it’s something like Bryne Tillman, transforming the way professionals convert LinkedIn connections to conversations. It fits in my 10 seconds and that’s my voiceover. So when they listen to it, it’s beyond just my name, pronunciation.

Bob Woods  05:59

And the big thing that I’d like to point out here is that while we can use that for like that little marketing thing, always be sure to have your name there first, even if it’s as simple as mine, because you want to keep to the spirit of why that feature was there to start with and you don’t want to have people start thinking, Oh, well, that’s just going to be a marketing pitch or whatever. So always have your name, even if it’s easy as John Smith. (Brynne: And Rainbow it)  Rainbow it, Yes!

Brynne Tillman  06:31

I didn’t know that it was a thing beyond Laura. (Bob: It is a thing. Yeah) That’s awesome. And then the third one is something that we talk a lot about when we talk about profiles. And it’s the headline, this is an opportunity immediately, to help people understand who you help, how you help them the results you bring, and what you do. Do you want to talk about that a little bit more?

Bob Woods  06:56

Yes. So in the headline, the way we teach, what we’re ultimately looking to do is to educate people on who you are, who you help, how you can help the other people, your audience or the people, you want to look at your profile and the results that you bring, as well. So nowadays, we have 220 characters back in the battle days, we had 120, which was much more difficult to do. Nowadays, we’ve got 220 so we can do that in an easier way to really build out all of those ideas within the headline. But within the headline, though, I mean, you should provide as much as you can to all that because one of the things that we teach about is attracting, teaching, and engaging when it comes to the profile in general. The headline goes a long way in the attraction part. and now that we have the name, pronunciation, and your story that just attracts people, even more than ever, basically.

Brynne Tillman  07:53

Yeah, I’m just gonna read mine. (Bob: Yeah) I really read the side, transforming the way professionals sell by converting connections to conversations. So that’s the, like, ultimate, if you’re going to talk about what do we do? That’s what we do. How do we do that? Through LinkedIn and sales navigator training, profile development, e-learning, and coaching membership, hosts of the Making Sales Social Podcast so that (Bob: Yep. What we’re doing right now)  And that’s what I have for my 220 characters. So who do I help? Professionals that sell. How do I help them do that? By converting their connections to conversations through LinkedIn and Sales Navigator training, through profile development, which is really Bob, through e-learning, and coaching, which is the whole team. So you know, at the end of this, once you’ve created this headline, it really… Its job is to get them to want to keep reading. So I think that that’s absolutely critical. Anything else you want to add to this?

Bob Woods  08:58

Yeah, actually, there’s one other kind of big thing because we’ve been talking about this as pitch. Although we don’t like the word pitch, we got to come up with another name for that. But I want to talk a little bit about tying it all together. So an elevator pitch is when it’s normally done is that 30 seconds where you download the elevator pitch to people. Here, you got three opportunities that strung together can act as that. So I would probably encourage you to have some unification among all three of them. I’ve been calling it marketing DNA, maybe we call it Profile DNA or something like that. (Brynne: Yeah. I love that! Branding DNA) Something like that. Make sure that those branding messages are if they’re not exactly the same, at least keep them cohesive. And in the same line, essentially, that’s why I was trying to think of saying like, so you know, so don’t talk about one thing in your Cover Story and something completely different in your headline, because you’re just going to confuse people at that point, make sure that they’re all unified, that they all have this, that they all have the same DNA running throughout and all three of them together, can equal a very effective elevator, main word to be determined later.

Brynne Tillman  10:23

Here’s the goal of our profile is to convert our visitors into conversations. And this is the start of it, right? This is at the top of the fold. This is the video that gets them to connect with you as a human being, they get to hear your voice again, in name, pronunciation, and understand the value you bring. And then through your headline, they’ll resonate and say, yes, they work with people like me. And this creates a little curiosity. So I’m willing to keep reading. And then once you get below, when we’ve got lots of content on them, stay tuned, we’ll continue to put content on that. But once they get below the fold is where we start to really bring value and we show up as a resource. Bob, thanks so much for joining us today. This was way fun.

Bob Woods  11:15

Yes, so yeah, exactly. So and I just want to tell everyone out there. Thanks again for joining us on Making Sales Social Lve! If you’re with us live on LinkedIn right now, we do this every week so keep an eye out for our live sessions. And if you’re listening to us right now, on our podcast, and you haven’t subscribed already, we invite you to hit that subscribe or follow button or whatever it is, whatever platform you’re listening to, to access all of our previous shows, and then be alerted when new ones drop. So we do two shows weekly, this one and our Making Sales Social Interview series where we talk with leaders and experts in sales, marketing, business, and many more areas. And if you want more information on that, go to socialsaleslink.com/podcast Again, that’s socialsaleslink.com/podcast. So and when you’re out and about, always make sure that you’re making your sales social. Thanks, everybody. Bye. 

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